


Devil's Own

by gaelicspirit



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Gen, Hurt!Matt, Hurt/Comfort, Karen Learns the Truth, Many Swear Words (mostly from Foggy)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 16:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 50,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4793654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaelicspirit/pseuds/gaelicspirit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set post S1. Daredevil may be the Man Without Fear, but Matt Murdock is terrified. Especially when the law isn’t enough and Daredevil can’t save everyone. It’s said that there is someone in Hell’s Kitchen who will hear a cry for help, but what if the person calling out is Matt? Who saves him when Daredevil can’t? </p><p> <br/><i>Whatever Matt was going to say was lost to the storm. He wavered, his legs buckling. Foggy was out of the doorway and across the roof before Matt’s knees hit the surface, his friend collapsing against him in a tangle of trembling limbs. </i></p><p>  <i>“I gotcha,” Foggy promised. Karen felt tears blend with the smack of snow across her cheek. “I gotcha, buddy.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer/Warning:** Nothing you recognize is mine. Including the odd movie line; I like to work quotes in here and there if I can. Usual canon-compliant violence and a fair warning for angst. Also, everything I know about lawyering I learned from John Grisham books, so. 
> 
> **Author’s Note:** I decided I had another DD fic in me, since I can’t seem to be able to shake my fascination with Matt Murdock. Turns out it was a case-fic dancing around in the corridors of my brain, so for you fellow h/c junkies, this is one of those slow-builds, but I hope the h/c you’ll find in the latter chapters is satisfying enough to balance the overall story.
> 
> Oh, also. Some who reviewed my last Daredevil story asked for more Karen and the best way I could think to bring her into the mix a bit more was for her to discover the truth. So posting a warning for post-S1 AU-ishness (what? it’s a thing) on the Karen front. Many, many sincere thanks to **ThruTerrysEyes** for her sanity check. If you read, I hope you enjoy.

_“Other things may change us, but we start and end with family.”  
_ \- Anthony Brandt

**

**Prologue**

_The snow swirled around him like a miniature cyclone, wind gusting without mercy as they stood facing each other on the barren rooftop. He was breathing hard, shoulders heaving with the effort, lips slightly parted as though trapped between gasping for air and trying not to scream. His hands—half curled into fists, blood-crusted knuckles visibly swollen in the pale light—shook at his sides, the motion a confession of vulnerability his lips would never utter._

_He was swaying, not just from the force of the storm, but from his rapidly weakening body, yet he refused to move. It was as though he’d frozen there, trapped in a world that betrayed him by suppressing the fire that had always guided him. His expressionless eyes darted, fear drawn in blood and bruises on his face._

_Foggy started to reach out, to offer a hand and guide his friend to safety. The storm surged then and turned the snow into icy pellets that sliced and burned. Matt stumbled forward, hand out in a helpless gesture of defiance against the forces buffeting him from outside and within._

_“Foggy?”_

_A world of questions captured in a word._

_“Here, buddy.” The emotion in Foggy’s voice was practically a living thing, stepping forward and standing between them, demanding to be recognized._

_“I can’t….”_

_Whatever Matt was going to say was lost to the storm. He wavered, his legs buckling. Foggy was out of the doorway and across the roof before Matt’s knees hit the surface, his friend collapsing against him in a tangle of trembling limbs._

_“I gotcha,” Foggy promised. Karen felt tears blend with the smack of snow across her cheek. “I gotcha, buddy.”_

_Matt said nothing, as if he already knew this was going to be one of the longest nights of his life._


	2. Foggy

**

**Foggy**

He’d learned to be careful.

Not just the care of a best friend or a business partner; the care of someone who helplessly watched the curtain tear away, blinked away tears drawn out by the pain of truth, and made a choice to move forward. The care of someone who experienced loss. The care of a changed man.

Discovering who Matt really was – not simply _Daredevil_ , but the plethora of angles that he had somehow missed over the years – forced Foggy Nelson to take a long look in the mirror and re-evaluate things he’d taken for granted most of his life: home, family, security.

Matt was made of sharp edges, as though he was simply waiting for everything to shatter around him. Foggy wasn’t going to be the weapon that brought about his friend’s emotional destruction, even if part of him believed the only thing to save Matt was to destroy Daredevil.

So he learned to be careful. And he kept watch.

Winter hadn’t yet fully gripped New York the way Foggy knew it would, but the night was plenty cold when he finally ventured from the confines of their small office to seek Matt out. He’d called his friend’s phone several times, not really expecting an answer, but hoping all the same. Matt might feel as though the city needed him prowling the rooftops dressed in barely-protective body armor, but Foggy was determined to prove that the work Matt did as a lawyer was as important – if not more so – as the work he did with his fists.

Besides, he had good news.

Halfway to Matt’s apartment, Foggy stopped and made an about-face, the rising moon illuminating the street like a spot light. The tension rolling from Matt that evening meant one of two things: early night in the suit or long work-out at Fogwell’s. He hoped luck was with him for once when it came to knowing his friend.

The interior of Fogwell’s gym was significantly warmer than the street and Foggy sighed with relief at the shift in temperature as he stepped through the heavy wooden door, its single window frosted over with the coming of night. The smell of sweat and leather struck him immediately and he couldn’t help wondering, as he always did these days, if he noticed the scents so strongly how they must impact Matt.

“Hey pal,” greeted the incongruously grizzled man who currently ran Fogwell’s Gym, “we’re closin’ up.”

Foggy lifted his chin; he could hear the steady _whoosh-slap_ of someone working over a jump rope.

“Just here to pick up a friend,” he replied, eyes darting from the stub of an unlit cigar to the limp, white towel draped around the man’s ample neck.

“Only one still here’s Murdock,” the man replied, jerking his head to the left, indicating the gym further in. “He won’t be done for hours.”

“Okay if I wait?” Foggy asked, spreading his hands out in an _I come in peace_ gesture, keenly aware of how out of place he looked in his just-this-side-of-shabby gray suit and loafers.

The man’s eyes raked him and Foggy imagined he felt the imprint of judgment left behind.

“He ain’t gonna leave ‘til he’s good ‘n ready,” the man replied.

Foggy bowed his lips in an agreeable frown. “I won’t rush him,” he promised, unsurprised by the protective nature the man displayed in unnecessary defense of his friend.

Matt had that effect on people. The blind thing aside, Matt managed to find a way to say just the right thing to people to give them the reassurance they needed. He’d seen it work with Karen, felt himself react to it. He’d watched Matt practically hypnotize a jury by selecting the exact words to settle them as if he could see inside their souls – which, as far as Foggy was concerned, he practically could.

_“Words are just tools, Foggy,”_ Matt told him after their last trial case where he deftly shifted a jury’s attention from the prosecution’s inflammatory closing argument to decide in the favor of their defense. _“Sometimes they’re a shotgun blast when a knife works better.”_

Foggy pulled his attention back to the stogie-chomping gym manager when he heard Matt’s name.

“Murdock’s got the key to the back. You make sure he locks up when you leave.”

“You got it,” Foggy nodded and flipped the man a quick two-finger salute.

He waited until the man turned off the light to the front office and locked the door behind him, the gym dark and quiet except for the steady _whoosh-slap_ of the rope. Obviously, Matt wouldn’t need any lights in the gym; it still seemed rather eerie, though.

Like the spirit of an old fighter was haunting Fogwell’s gym.

Foggy moved toward the end of the hallway; he knew Matt had to be aware of his presence; had probably heard him two blocks away, picking his heartbeat out of the crowd and simply waiting for him to show up. High, wide windows on the opposite end of the gym let in the clean, white light of the full moon and the softer yellowed glow of a security light from the alley cast streaming shadows across the empty boxing ring, the racks of weights, and the heavy bags hanging from thick chains along the wall near where Foggy stood.

Matt had his back to the hallway. He was wearing a dark tank, loose over gray sweats, and his hands were wrapped in white tape. His feet were a blurred one-two step as he skipped over the fast-turning rope, every so often crossing his arms in front of him to adjust the rhythm. Abruptly, he stopped, dropping the rope in a pile, his breathing loud and ragged with exertion.

It was then Foggy noticed the slim, white cords leading from a small pocket in the front of Matt’s sweats to his ears. Without the whir of the rope, Foggy could hear the tinny sound of the music; it had to be blasting Matt’s eardrums as loud as it was. It became clear now why Matt hadn’t spoken to him: he was using the decibel level of the music to cancel out the world. Foggy had no idea how difficult it had to be for Matt to focus on _not_ hearing everything around him. In order to get some time alone in his head, Matt was apparently willing to make himself, effectively, completely blind.

Reaching between his shoulder blades, Matt pulled his tank off, using the edges of the material to wipe the sweat from his face, then tossing it on the pile of rope. Reaching to his right with an air of caution, Matt’s fingers found the edge of the empty boxing ring. He used the canvas to guide him forward, crossing to the weight racks. Foggy watched as Matt ran his fingers along the cement blocks that created the wall, as though counting, then backed up two steps and reached up, jumping slightly to grab a metal bar roughly three feet over his head.

The moonlight shining through the high windows cut a path of light across Matt’s torso and Foggy straightened slightly. As Matt pulled his body up to chin the bar, his legs slightly bent and crossed at the ankles, Foggy could see a pattern on his friend’s side and back: old bruises now yellowing, new bruises bluish-purple in the dusky light, a starburst of broken blood vessels scatted from the center.

Foggy frowned. That hadn’t come from a fist; someone had kicked Matt, hard. Foggy forced himself to exhale slowly, concentrating on staying calm. The red Daredevil suit – for all its comic-book absurdity – had kept Matt safe thus far. Even Claire had admitted that the material was ingenious.

He knew that what he was seeing was so much better than it might have been; which was a fucking ridiculous thing to think, when it came down to it.

They were _lawyers_. Columbia graduates. Tax-paying residents of New York City. They shouldn’t be thinking about the ability of a fabric to deflect a knife blade or shield cracked ribs.

And yet, there it was.

Leaning against the wall, Foggy crossed his arms over his chest and watched as his friend punished himself, for that’s what it appeared Matt was doing. Under the guise of a work-out, this was practically an exorcism of personal demons. After several chin-ups – Foggy lost count once he spied the bruises Matt had wisely kept hidden while at work over the past week – Matt dropped, pausing a moment to bend over and catch his breath.

Foggy recognized Matt’s music: Linkin Park’s _Numb_. He huffed. The irony.

Knowing his friend’s perception was skewed by the music, Foggy moved over to the nearest heavy bag, guessing that was Matt’s next move. He stood on the opposite side of the bag, fingers lightly balanced on the worn leather, waiting. When Matt made an abrupt left-turn, having clearly mapped out the gym long ago to know how many steps it would be from the bar to the heavy bag, Foggy bit the inside of his lip.

In the slated shadows of the darkened gym the bruises looked even worse along Matt’s chest: deep-purple painted his left side as though someone had swung a bat, using his best friend as their last chance for a home run. Matt paused a moment after he turned, his head tilting to the side, chin coming up in a recognizable motion and Foggy knew he was caught. Reaching up to pull the earbuds from his ears, Matt let them hang from his waistband and sighed tiredly.

“How long have you been here?” he asked, his voice, though quiet, like a slap of sound against the night.

“Long enough to guess Brett Mahoney has you to thank for that drug bust down on 45th he’s getting the credit for,” Foggy replied. “What was it, a baseball bat?”

Matt shifted his head back to square up with his shoulders, his lips twitching as though he were fighting the instinct to deny what Foggy was saying. “Crowbar,” he replied, one hand snaking up to cover the angry bruise. “I think.”

Foggy nodded once, watching. “Well, get to it, then,” he said, a forced casualness clear in his tone. “Your punishment—er, sorry, _workout_ isn’t over yet.”

“Foggy—“ Matt started, a glimmer of something like pain skimming across his face and momentarily causing his blank, unfocused eyes to appear as though they were actually staring right at Foggy.

“What?” Foggy kept the challenge in his reply.

They stood quietly for several heartbeats – Foggy actually found himself counting his own, knowing Matt was listening to it – and then Matt exhaled.

“You sure you want to hold that thing?”

“Is it easier for you if I do?”

“Well, yeah,” Matt shrugged, clearly conveying that _ease_ was never something he’d ever bothered with before.

“Okay, then. Swing away, Merrill.”

Matt’s lips twitched once more, but this time Foggy saw the grin dancing there. “You know I never get your movie references.” He pulled his small iPod from the hidden pocket in his sweatpants and effortlessly tossed it on top of his discarded tank shirt.

“C’mon, man, _Signs_? M. Night?”

“Emnite? What’s an emnite?”

Foggy braced himself as Matt rolled his neck, his movements sure and fluid, no trace of the hesitant, exploratory motion of minutes before when his environment had been tunneled by the deafening music.

“M. Night Shyamalan,” Foggy explained, shaking his head in mock exasperation. “We need to update your Netflix account pronto.”

At that, Matt grinned and brought his hands up. His first hit bounced the bag against Foggy’s chest and drew a soft _oof_ from his lips.

“You gonna hold it?” Matt asked, feet apart, shoulders squared.

“I _am_ holding it.”

“Steady. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Dude, it’s not like you’re Captain America or some—“

Matt swung again and Foggy bit his tongue, ending his sarcastic reply. He gripped the bag tight, the impact of Matt’s fists shaking through his arms.

“Let it roll, Foggy,” Matt said softly, slamming the bag with a quick one-two combination. “Don’t hold on so tight.”

Foggy relaxed his grip slightly, instinctively turning his arms into springs as Matt came at it with four jabs and a right cross.

“Boxing is like dancing,” Matt said, barely breathing hard from the exertion. Foggy felt sweat begin to slide down his spine. “You have to move. You stay still, it’s over.”

Foggy listened to Matt’s low voice, moving as he moved, keeping the bag between them, sweat gathering under his arms, along his waistband. Matt quieted down after a while, his punches becoming faster, harder, jabs pulling his fists back as though his shoulders were tightly-wound springs. After a while, he stopped, shaking out his fingers and rolling his neck, though his feet never stopped moving.

Foggy shrugged out of his restrictive jacket, wishing for his sneakers, then balanced the bag again as Matt dropped his chin and raised his fists.

This time, there weren’t any boxing colloquialisms. There was a dangerous set to Matt’s jaw, a shadow blanketing his face and the hits were vicious. After the first volley, Foggy stepped back, unable to hold the bag steady. He slipped to the side, watching as Matt hammered the bag with a palpable, manic energy, repeatedly striking out with his right until it seemed the arm would fall off, then switching to his left, finally sending the leather spinning, the heavy chains clinking as the weight bounced.

Foggy couldn’t help but wonder what – or _who_ – it was Matt fought in that moment. He seemed to be striking out at something dark, rage lining his face until he was no longer _Matt_ , but something dangerous; something that struck out from the shadows.

A force to be reckoned with.

Breathless, panting, Matt staggered back, his dark hair clinging to his forehead, eyes blinking as sweat ran down his face. As Foggy watched, the anger that had tightened his features into a fist of concentration drained, leaving Matt looking young and tired. He lifted a shaking hand to wipe his face and then dropped his arms at his sides as though they were made of lead. After a moment with no sound in the gym save Matt’s ragged breathing, he turned in Foggy’s direction, as though asking for something.

“You’re gonna eat lightning and you’re gonna crap thunder!” Foggy quoted in his best Burgess Meredith impression.

For half a heartbeat Matt remained expressionless, but then a smile ripped across his face and he barked out a quick, surprised laugh.

“Oh, know that one, do you?”

“I’m a boxer’s kid, Foggy,” Matt chuckled. “I grew up on _Rocky_.”

“I failed you as a friend in law school, buddy,” Foggy shook his head, bending to grab his jacket and move out of the shadows cast by the heavy bags. “We spent way too much time with the books and not nearly enough time at Blockbuster.”

Grinning, Matt staggered back once more, then caught his balance, a hand slipping up to press against his bruised side. He headed over to where he’d dropped his tank shirt and rope and with a soft groan bent over to grab up the items he’d left there. Foggy saw a small roll of tape tangled up in the jump rope and reached out to take it from him.

“Crowbar, huh?” he asked, holding up the tape.

“I may have cracked a couple ribs,” Matt confessed.

“And so you thought, hey, I know, I’ll finish the job by going a few rounds with a heavy bag!”

“Bags don’t hit back,” Matt argued. “My muscles freeze up if I don’t keep them moving.”

Foggy hummed a discontented reply.

“Claire would agree,” Matt pressed on.

“Pretty sure her idea of moving and your idea of moving aren’t even close.”

The sweat was starting to dry, causing Foggy’s shirt to stick to him uncomfortably and Matt shivered slightly as he used his tank to wipe the sweat from his neck and torso. Foggy could see the stark outlines of scars littering his friend’s skin – some he knew about, some he’d watched Claire sew closed, some older, some newer – a collection of stories and encounters, each one a catalyst to drive Matt Murdock forward.

“Came over here to tell you the McClair case settled,” Foggy said, watching as Matt’s chin came up in response. “You put more sleepless nights into that one than any of us; I figured you’d want to know right away.”

“You call Freddie’s dad?” Matt asked as he began to unwrap his taped hands with the quick and sure motion of someone for whom this was habitual.

“First thing,” Foggy nodded, not bothering to dictate the nuance of that automatic move any longer.

In the time since Fisk was put away and Foggy had discovered the truth about Matt’s nocturnal habits, he’d learned the difference between what Matt really needed from him and what was only a show catering to the comfort level of the general population.

He’d still describe the world to Matt as they moved through their lives because even echolocation couldn’t give Matt a sense of what autumn looked like, or how a sunset could shift an alley from gritty to spellbinding for a few seconds. But he no longer worried about him running into a light pole, stepping out into traffic, or tripping over a cat – though Matt often used those very excuses to explain the bruises he wasn’t able to hide.

However, even with Foggy choosing to accept this new _my best friend is a superhero_ path, there were levels to their relationship he hadn’t quite learned to navigate, adding extra layers and sharp corners he’d catch himself on. Matt created most of those layers; he wasn’t simply a lawyer by day, vigilante by night.

Matt’s secrets had secrets.

“Good,” Matt nodded, a quick, satisfied smile softening his expression for a moment. “Give him some closure.”

“And a way for us to keep paying the rent,” Foggy shrugged, thinking of the amount the prosecution had offered. Matt began to move passed him, tossing the balled-up wraps from his hands onto a nearby bench. “Hey, where’re you going?”

“Showers,” Matt replied, then paused and half turned, not quite facing him. “I was, uh…I mean, since you’re here, maybe you could…tape up my ribs?”

Foggy rolled his eyes. As if he even had to ask. “I don’t know. Maybe it’ll teach you to avoid crowbars if you have to deal with it yourself.”

At that, Matt did turn. “It’s not like there are rules for fighting criminals, Foggy.”

“Sure there are,” Foggy replied. “Whole law books full of ‘em.”

“That’s not,” Matt paused, huffing out a laugh that conceded Foggy’s point. He rubbed the back of his head, self-consciously. “Not what I meant.”

“You mean you guys don’t meet up before the rumble, vote on weapons?” Foggy teased.

“Not exactly.”

Foggy sighed for dramatic effect. “I guess I already helped sew you up once; I _suppose_ I can keep your ribs from falling apart.”

Matt’s answering grin was at once disarming and mischievous. “You wanna help me out? Well, help me out! Come on, help me out. I'm standin' here!” he quoted.

Foggy waited a beat, then declared, “That is the worst Rocky Balboa impression I have ever heard.”

Matt began to walk backwards toward the showers. “It wasn’t _that_ bad,” he chuckled.

“Horrendous. Abysmal. Where’s a thesaurus when I need one?”

“Cut me, Mick!” Matt tossed over his shoulder as he turned toward the darkened showers, the grin in his voice echoing against the tiles.

Foggy followed him as far as the doorway and laughed as their equally terrible yells of, “Yo! Adrian!” clashed against the sound of the running water. Though it was completely logical, it still seemed rather bizarre that the man didn’t bother to turn on the lights. The shadows had grown while they were in the gym, creating secret corners that toyed with Foggy’s over-active imagination, though he discovered his eyes had adjusted to the murk and he could make out all of the shapes in his vicinity with little trouble.

Foggy waited until Matt shut off the water, then called into the darkened shower room, “I think I got us another client.”

“Yeah?” Matt called back. “That was quick. You hittin’ Brett up again?”

“I do not _hit him up_ ,” Foggy replied. “I simply provide him with gifts that keep his mama happy.”

“You feed her bad habits.”

“You say tomato…,” Foggy waved a hand toward the opened space. “Anyway, after what you’ve done for his career—“

“Not _me_ ,” Matt’s disembodied voice corrected.

“Don’t even start. Point is, he can throw us a bone or two,” Foggy concluded, looking up as Matt exited, now dressed in jeans, with a T-shirt and jacket gripped in one hand. “You keep spare clothes here?”

“Of course,” Matt replied. “Doesn’t everyone?”

Foggy shrugged. “Hell, if I know. Only time I step into a gym is to find you.”

Matt pulled up short. “I could…I could train you a little bit. If you wanted.”

“Train me?”

“Some fighting moves,” Matt offered, suddenly sounding almost shy. “Self-defense.”

“What, like your friend Stick?”

At that, Matt’s face darkened. “Uh, no. _Nothing_ like him.”

Foggy quieted, momentarily surprised by the shift in his friend’s tone. When he didn’t say anything right away, Matt shrugged, setting his sweaty clothes down on a bench.

“Never mind. It was a stupid idea, forget I said anything.”

Foggy reached out, grabbing Matt’s shoulder. “Wait, no. It’s not a stupid idea.”

Matt looked over, waiting, his eyes resting on a point just to the left of Foggy’s face.

“I’d like that,” Foggy said. “Thanks, buddy.”

Matt smiled, nodding. “You still got that tape?”

“Right here.” Foggy lifted up the roll tape.

“You know how to do this?”

“Um…I saw it in a movie once.”

Matt settled his lips into a smile that somehow managed to not look condescending. He lifted his arm, his smile shifting to a grimace of discomfort. “The idea is to support the bones without restricting breathing. Stretch the tape over this area. There’s probably a bruise there.”

Foggy’s eyes rested on the long purple mark with a starburst of blood vessels at the center. “Uh, yeah. There’s a bruise all right.”

“Okay, well,” Matt exhaled slowly. “Cover the bruise. Go around to the back, too.”

“What’d you do, rotate for him?” Foggy cut the tape with his teeth.

“I was on the ground,” Matt said. “I rolled to try to get away.”

“Of course you did.”

“Easy,” Matt winced as Foggy pressed a little harder than was probably necessary.

“Sorry,” Foggy said, sincerely. “You know how to make this hurt less?”

“I don’t like pain meds,” Matt told him. “Messes with my perception.”

“So you’ve said,” Foggy replied, finishing off the tape. “But what I was _gonna_ say was to just stick with being a lawyer. You’re pretty damn good at it.”

Matt pulled his T-shirt down to the waistband of his jeans and reached for his jacket. “So are you.”

“Well, sure, but…everyone knows you’re the brains of this outfit.” Foggy clapped a hand on Matt’s shoulder.

Matt frowned. “That’s not true,” he protested. “You caught the loop hole in the Devon case, and—“

“Matty, hang on,” Foggy interrupted him. “I’m not fishing for compliments here. I’m telling you that you’re _good_ at what you do. What you _legally_ do. So if you ever, you know, thought about stopping the rest…it’s not like you wouldn’t still be helping people.”

Matt pressed his lips together, a tell that he was holding something back. His brows met across the bridge of his nose and he dropped his chin. There was something about the set of Matt’s shoulders, the way he couldn’t seem to still his hands, tugging at the edge of his jacket nervously, that caused Foggy to hold his breath, thinking maybe _this time_ ….

“Thanks for saying that, but…,” Matt’s smile was filled with regret. “Sometimes the law still isn’t enough.”

Foggy sighed. “I had to try.”

“I know,” Matt replied quietly. “But…I wish you wouldn’t. Try, that is.”

“Yeah, well,” Foggy shrugged, hearing the edge to his voice. “I wish you wouldn’t go out and get covered in bruises, so I guess we’re both disappointed.”

Matt rolled his lips against his teeth, nodding once. “You heading home?”

“Hell no!” Foggy protested. “We just closed a major case that will keep our lights on for at least six more months. What’s the plan, amigo?”

Matt pulled his head back in surprise. “I just, uh…I was going to head home and grab a couple hours sleep before….”

“ _That’s_ your plan? Sleep a few hours then go out and get your ass kicked?” Foggy shook his head and grabbed Matt’s shoulder, steering him toward the back door. “You never get to make plans again.”

Matt chuckled. “Okay, what’s _your_ plan?”

“It _was_ Josie’s and tequila, but now I’m thinking beer, pizza, and Netflix. We have at least three decades of film to work through.”

“Sounds tempting,” Matt hedged, locking the door behind them.

The shock of the winter air stabbed through him and Foggy saw Matt echo his immediate shiver.

“Oh, hell no, Murdock,” Foggy shook his head, grabbing Matt’s arm in a solid grip. “I just spent the last two hours in a _gym_ waiting for you. You owe me at least one movie from the 21 st century.”

Matt chuckled, unfurling his cane with a practiced flick of his wrist. “Fair enough. You can tell me about this new case on the way.”

Foggy bounced his head in concession as Matt’s hand found the bend of his elbow. “Don’t know much, actually. Brett just called tonight. But it sounds like something that’ll be right up your alley – we even get to depose a Catholic nun.”

“Exciting,” Matt teased. “Nelson & Murdock at it again, huh?”

“Just like Beggar’s Canyon back home,” Foggy laughed.

Matt tilted his head quizzically. “You’re from Hell’s Kitchen.”

“Dude, are you _kidding_ me? You don’t recognize a _Star Wars_ quote?” Foggy groaned. When Matt simply shook his head once, Foggy continued, “ _Rocky_ and _Star Wars_ were released practically the same year!”

“Yeah, well,” Matt smiled, “my dad wasn’t a Jedi.”

“Screw the 21st century,” Foggy declared. “Your education begins in the ‘70’s tonight.”

Matt was silent, but Foggy felt his grin in the comfortable way he matched his stride to Foggy’s. The bruises hadn’t been that bad this time. And Matt had been more engaged in their cases of late; it gave Foggy hope that maybe Matt was burning through the anger, beating out the pain that drove him to haunt the rooftops of Hell’s Kitchen, listening to the cries for help and responding without regard to his own well-being.

The way Matt cared so openly for this city, literally bleeding for it, Foggy held onto the hope he’d once more respond to a plea for help through the _law_ ; through the right channels with checks and balances in place to punish the bad and protect the innocent, the ground upon which they’d begun their friendship.

He should have known better.

 


	3. Matt

**

**Matt**

God, he hated winter.

It wasn’t so much the cold; in fact, the lower temperatures seemed to be a detriment to many of the criminal activities he found himself combating during the summer months. He hadn’t used his old, internet-purchased gear long enough to know if he would have suffered from hypothermia while out patrolling the streets and rooftops of Hell’s Kitchen during the unforgiving New York winters, but the new suit provided him a bit of insulation from the cold.

It was really more accurate to say that Matt hated _snow_.

When it fell, wet and heavy, collecting on the streets and sidewalks, lining rooftops and window wells, it damped the sounds, muffling them to the point he found himself actually needing his cane at times. It sent his sense into chaos; cries for help, shouts of anger, gunshots, impacts of skin-on-skin, tires skidding, metal crunching…it all seemed to blend into a blurred sound of misery.

His concentration was sent into overdrive and as a result it was nearly impossible for him to come down to a relatively _normal_ level of awareness. He rarely slept; he struggled with regular conversations, his temper simmered just beneath the surface. The only way to keep from taking off the wrong person’s head was to stay vigilant.

Constantly, exhaustingly vigilant.

“Ugh, it’s raining,” Foggy grumbled, standing just inside the doorway of their office walk-up. “And it’s damn cold.”

Foggy had, Matt noticed, stopped apologizing to Matt’s delicate Catholic sensibilities for his language around the same time he learned that Matt had no problem beating someone to a bloody pulp if they were remorseless about breaking the law.

“You gonna melt?” Matt teased.

“I might,” Foggy replied, still not stepping out into the inclement weather. “I’m awfully sweet.”

“The rain’s no big deal, Foggy,” Matt shrugged, the smell of snow a chaser to each heavy raindrop. He was grateful to Karen for insisting they both wear heavier coats, even if they were taking a cab to the address Brett Mahoney had given Foggy. “I actually like it.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Foggy muttered. “Love the rain, hate the snow.”

Matt nodded. Four years as roommates during law school and two years afterwards perfecting the balance that was friendship had taught Foggy few things about Matt that, if he’d had accurate information, would have brought the truth to light long before he found Matt bleeding out on his apartment floor. Matt sometimes wondered if Foggy looked back over their years together and saw the answers to questions he hadn’t known to ask.

“It…echoes,” Matt explained. “It paints a picture of…everything. The raindrops hit objects and the sound bounces and it’s like…it’s like I can actually see.”

He felt Foggy shift in surprise next to him. “You never told me that.”

“Well,” Matt shrugged again. “You didn’t know about my….” He waved a hand around his face, helplessly.

“Super-radar senses?” Foggy supplied.

“Going out in the rain used to be my favorite thing as a kid,” Matt confessed. “When it rained…I could remember what trees looked like. And cars. And…sometimes, y’know, if they weren’t using an umbrella, I could…,” Matt ducked his head, self-consciously, “I could see people’s faces. Features.”

“Wow,” Foggy replied. “So, no world on fire in the rain, huh?”

“Not really.”

“Well, if we weren’t on our way to meet a potential client, I’d let you check out the aesthetic perfection that is Foggy Nelson,” Foggy declared. Matt heard the shift of his hair as he tossed his head. “As it is, I’m just going to stick with, _ugh, it’s raining_ , because you know what cold rain turns into.”

“Ice,” Matt sighed.

“And even super-radar senses can’t keep you from falling on your ass when you hit ice,” Foggy reminded him. “I saw it one too many times at Columbia for it to be part of the show.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Didn’t think so,” Foggy sighed. “Here’s the cab.”

They stepped out, sans umbrellas, and Matt kept his hand on Foggy’s elbow as they hurried across to the cab Karen had called for them. Any other day, Matt would have protested; they were perfectly capable of taking the subway or hailing a cab themselves, but last night had been long, his ribs weren’t quite healed, and he was working on about two hours sleep.

He conceded the pre-arranged cab ride.

As Foggy rattled off the address through the small window in the plastic divider, Matt turned his attention to the street beyond his window. His city was beautiful in the rain. A tiled mosaic of images pieced together to form a picture he rarely got to see. It took him a moment to tune back in to Foggy’s words.

“…he’s been there like, twenty years or something.”

“Who has?”

“Our client,” Foggy said, a thinly veiled edge of patience skirting his tone. 

“Right,” Matt momentarily pulled his attention from the rain-washed world and focused on Foggy. “So, bring me up to speed. We didn’t have much time to discuss this morning.”

“That’s because someone got a late start.”

Matt didn’t rise to the bait.

He’d managed to avoid any real damage the previous night, but it had been a near thing. He was chasing a new player in Hell’s Kitchen’s drug ring; he had wrapped up part of the operation last week on 45th, depositing the dealer at Sergeant Brett Mahoney’s feet. But that was just one piece of a larger puzzle, Matt knew. If he wanted to stop this thing, he had to find the source, not the dealers.

They were packaging a hallucinogenic drug in what appeared to be pixie sticks, calling it simply, and unoriginally, Dust. Matt had cut several distributors off at the knee – one almost literally – but he kept seeing the sticks in circulation and around the flop houses and harbor. He was terrified that the drug, disguised as candy, would find its way to the school systems before he could locate the head of the snake.

“All I know is,” Foggy continued, sighing a bit when Matt declined to argue about his nocturnal habits, “Brett said this was a cold case that got hot again. Some guy is being accused of a murder that occurred when we were still watching Saturday morning cartoons.”

“And he’s saying he didn’t do it.”

“Bingo.” Matt heard the course material of Foggy’s suit rub against the faux leather seat of the cab as he shrugged. “Guess he was suffering from some kind of PTSD amnesia but when he got his memory back, they could prosecute.”

“Why’d Brett send it our way?” Matt frowned.

“Not sure,” Foggy replied. “Something about his dad knowing the guy – or maybe it was originally his dad’s bust? He just thought the guy could use a decent defense, I guess.”

Matt nodded, turning toward the rain-soaked city. It was hard to determine where they were from within the cave-like effects of the cab. All of the buildings sounded the same in the rain. He found himself sifting through mental maps as they drove, cataloguing which buildings he’d searched, which he’d used as protection, which he’d found some Dust dealers in, and where he needed to look next.

It wasn’t until Foggy flicked the back of his fingers across Matt’s bicep that he realized his friend had continued running down the case as they drove. Matt sighed. His concentration was shot; he was focusing on all the wrong things. He wasn’t Daredevil right now, he was Matt Murdock and he needed to get his shit together.

“Here we are,” Foggy said as the cab slowed. “We’re supposed to meet with a…,” Matt heard a paper crackle as Foggy unfolded it, “Sister Elisa Connor. Huh, I always thought they were named after saints or something.”

“That’s because you learned about Catholicism from the movies,” Matt commented as Foggy paid the driver.

“Right.” The frown was clear in Foggy’s voice. “So, do I have to, like…cross myself or something?”

Matt chuckled. “No. Just try not to swear in front of her.”

“Great,” Foggy muttered. “Now all I want to do is swear.”

Foggy opened the cab door and Matt smelled the rain wash in on a brief gust of air. The only time the city ever smelled clean was during a rainstorm; he could detect the minerals in the water, drawn up through the heat of the sun and flung back down to the earth in a tantrum, sweeping away the scents of stale food and sweat, exhaust and oil, cigarettes and dirt.

He sensed Foggy duck and scurry into the safety of the building’s recessed entrance. Unfurling his cane, Matt pulled himself free of the cab’s protection, the cold rain pelting him and quickly soaking his bare head. He found his way to Foggy, his senses stretched back to the street. By the smell in the air, the rain would change to snow before too long and world would be masked.

“Ready?” Foggy asked, hand on the door knob.

“Let’s do this.”

The moment they stepped inside, Matt felt something inside him shift.

The air had texture, as if it were folding around him rather than parting before him. He could detect the oddly nauseating scents of lemon furniture cleaner and bleach – none of the welcoming and familiar nuances of oak and old paper that enticed him to sit quietly in sanctuaries and fight to still the river of anger that constantly roiled within.

Something was very wrong.

“What church is this?” Matt asked, dismayed to hear the tightness in his voice, his throat closing off at the end of his words.

He felt Foggy pause—that catch in his breathing just before saying something—and sensed him turning to face him. “It’s not a church.”

He sounded confused which was just fine because Matt felt completely lost at the moment.

“You said we’re deposing—“

“She’s at a _children’s home_ ,” Foggy said. “I told you that.”

Matt drew in a low, shallow breath. “Which one?”

“St. Agnes,” Foggy supplied and Matt felt his friend’s hand grip his elbow. “Hey, man, you okay?”

He was pretty damn far from okay, but before he could figure out how to reorder his suddenly chaotic thoughts into a reasonably coherent sentence, he detected another heartbeat, steady and growing louder. Gripping the top of his cane tightly, Matt focused on this new presence, his senses stretching, uncatalogued information slamming through his defenses like an overrun dam. Foggy released his arm and turned toward the woman—he could smell the powder on her skin, the mint and rosemary scented shampoo, a faint trace of berries in her lip balm—leaving Matt to find his own balance.

“Sister Elisa?” Foggy asked.

“Yes, hello.” There was a smile in her voice. “You must be…?”

“Fog—Franklin Nelson,” Foggy replied. Matt heard calluses on Foggy’s rougher palms brush against the Sister’s softer skin. “This is my partner, Matt Murdock.”

“Mr. Murdock.”

She was holding out her hand, Matt knew. People seemed to not immediately register the purpose of the white cane and dark glasses until _after_ they’d instinctively reached for his hand. He usually held his out and allowed them to shift and grasp his in greeting, but this time he found it impossible to release his grip on the cane.

“Sister.”

There was an awkward beat before Sister Elisa took a quick breath and asked them to follow her. Foggy bumped Matt with his elbow. Matt took it, hoping desperately that his friend wouldn’t feel his hand shaking. He didn’t bother to tell Foggy that he didn’t need a guide through this place. That he could have navigated these hallways and corridors even without his heightened senses.

That though he’d never once seen the interior of St. Agnes, its image chased through his nightmares to this day.

Sister Elisa was talking to them as she led them back toward where the administrative offices were located. Matt tried to focus on the sound of her voice, but it kept fading in and out like the world was disintegrating at the edges. Some things had changed in the decade plus since he’d left, but mostly it was the same smell, the same texture to the air, the same weight of loss and fear and disappointment and anger…so _much_ anger.

He was practically trembling with it.

Before he was ready, they were being asked to sit and Foggy was nudging a chair close to him. There was something off about Foggy, too. His skin was hot, his heartbeat slightly irregular. Matt realized it was worry; Foggy was worried, and dammit, that was Matt’s fault. He hadn’t been paying attention and Foggy knew Matt well enough to pick up on the fact that suddenly his whole world was on its ear.

“So. Where should I begin?” Sister Elisa asked.

_Focus on her voice_ , Matt ordered himself. _One voice. One voice in a world that won’t shut up._

Foggy was asking the right questions – _do you mind if we record this, do you agree to have Nelson and Murdock represent Mr. Henley, can you sign on his behalf_ – but Matt was too focused on Sister Elisa, trying to reassure himself that she hadn’t been here before, she didn’t know him from before, to do much more than register when she spoke.

“Does Bobby have to sign anything?” Sister Elisa asked.

Matt tilted his chin, registering the new name. “Bobby?”

“Bobby Henley,” Foggy stated in a clear _are you stoned or something_ tone. “Our client.”

“Right, of course,” Matt nodded once, painting on a brittle smile. “And is he here today?”

“No, I thought—“

“Sister Elisa is his legal guardian. We’re speaking to her first,” Foggy interrupted Sister Elisa, sounding as thought his teeth were clenched together. “ _Remember_?”

Matt swallowed, his throat suddenly resembling sandpaper. “My apologies, Sister,” he said with a nod toward her voice. “I’m not usually so…distracted.” He coughed, clearing his throat and fighting desperately to not tug at his collar.

“Could we get some water, maybe?” Foggy asked.

“Of course,” Sister Elisa replied. “I’ll just be a minute.”

She pushed her chair away from the desk, the heavy wooden legs scraping roughly against the cement floor, the sound making Matt’s skin try to turn inside out. He forced himself not to outwardly flinch as his memory drew up a perfect image of the room overlaid with what he could perceive today. He remembered the crack running down the center of the floor, remembered the desk with the worn edges, the window seat. It was mostly exactly the same, except for the bookshelves and upholstered chairs here now.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” Foggy demanded the moment Sister Elisa was out of earshot.

“I’m sorry,” Matt replied automatically, releasing his cane and dragging a hand down his suddenly sweaty face. “I don’t….”

“You look like you’re going to be sick,” Foggy informed him. “Are you hurt? Did something happen last night you didn’t tell me about?”

“No, nothing like that,” Matt shook his head. “It’s just that…. Foggy, this place—“

He couldn’t finish the sentence. This place what? Buried him in loneliness because no one understood how to talk to the blind kid? Gave him hope and then shattered his heart when they brought Stick into his life? Was an unworthy replacement for his father? Was the reason he couldn’t dampen the pain he heard echoing throughout the city _every single night_?

“You grew up in an orphanage, didn’t you?” Foggy asked, his voice softer, tone tempering with what sounded like realization. “After your dad…died?”

Matt nodded. “But…Foggy, not just—“

“Here we are,” Sister Elisa called out as she came back through the door. Matt flinched. He hadn’t heard her approach. “Water.”

Matt felt the cool glass on the back of his hand and reached out for it, gulping half the contents down before leaning forward to carefully set it on the edge of the desk.

“Better?”

“Yes, thank you,” Matt replied. “I apologize again.”

“No need,” Sister Elisa stated. “I can imagine returning here had to bring back some memories for you.”

Matt felt his heart drop then bounce up to try to strangle him. He heard Foggy’s heartbeat skip, the brief stutter filled in easily with the smooth, steady rhythm of Sister Elisa.

“But you should know that it’s one of the reasons Bobby agreed to meet with you,” Sister Elisa continued.

“Does he…did he know me? Uh, then?” Matt asked, hating the strange wheezing sound he could hear tail his sentences. He hoped he was the only one who could notice.

“No, I doubt it,” Sister Elisa replied with a sigh. “He would have been…let’s see, in his late teens when you arrived. And with your…,” she paused and Matt heard her breath catch slightly as she searched for the right words, “particular situation, you were kept separate.”

At that, Matt felt Foggy shift. “Wait, what do you mean, kept separate? Was Mr. Henley a danger to—“

“No, nothing like that,” Sister Elisa hastened to correct. Matt felt himself grow cold, the tips of his fingers tingling as though he’d been clenching them into fists. “It was just that we…. To keep all of the kids safe, there were certain…parameters we had to put into place.”

_It’s me_ , Matt remembered. _They kept_ me _separate_. 

If Foggy picked up on the nuance captured in the words Sister Elisa wasn’t saying, he didn’t show it. “If it should come out that Mr. Henley did know Matt, it could impact the case, maybe even prevent us from defending him. You need to be sure.”

“I’m sure,” Sister Elisa replied. Matt held still, listening as her mouth said one thing, her heart another. “Perhaps I should just explain the situation.”

Matt heard Foggy click the button on their voice recorder and set it on her desk. He blocked everything else out except the sound of her voice and heartbeat. His jaw began to ache with the effort, building tension along his face and up through his temples, but he knew he couldn’t allow _anything_ else to filter in. None of the ambient noise, none of the smells, nothing that seemed to want to draw him back into an abyss of memory and anchor him in misery.

“Bobby was twelve when came to us in 1989,” Sister Elisa began. “His parents had both been killed in a home invasion, of sorts. We didn’t really call it that back then. Their deaths were…,” she paused and Matt heard that same intake of air, “brutal. His mother had been stabbed, repeatedly, with one of the kitchen knives. His father…someone beat his head in with a brick from the fireplace.”

“Jesus,” Foggy breathed. “Oh shit, sorry, Sister. Damn.”

“Mr. Nelson, it’s okay,” Sister Elisa quieted him. “I called upon our Lord when I first heard the facts in the case myself.”

Matt heard Foggy shift uncomfortably and willed him to leave it at that.

“Bobby was in shock. He’d been found at the murder scene, covered in blood, holding both murder weapons.”

“He was _holding_ the weapons?” Matt asked.

“He had no memory of what had happened. The only thing he could tell the police when they found him was that his mom didn’t like the house messy, so he was cleaning up.”

“Poor kid was traumatized,” Foggy stated.

Matt heard Sister Elisa’s heartbeat pick up and tilted his head slightly, paying closer attention.

“Indeed,” Sister Elisa agreed with a small sigh. “Unfortunately, the trauma was rather far-reaching. Bobby seemed to have lost his long-term memory after that night, and had repeated problems with short-term. He knew who he was, could repeat his address when asked, knew basic functions like eating and dressing himself, but beyond that, his entire history had been erased.”

“And the short-term?” Matt asked.

“He would sometimes need to be reminded who we were, what was happening on a specific day, what had transpired the day prior. Typically, as you know, Mr. Murdock, a resident of St. Agnes is given back to the world when they turn eighteen, but with Bobby’s memory issues, everyone responsible for him felt it best if he stay here where it was familiar. He’s been our custodian since his eighteenth birthday.”

Matt simply nodded, stifling the wince at the sickeningly familiar words. _Given back to the world._ As though the time at St. Agnes had been spent in complete protection, molding young minds to cope with the brutality of being completely alone.

Foggy continued to ask questions about the case the police had built against Bobby. It sounded from what Sister Elisa told them that the case was largely circumstantial based primarily on lack of forced entry and finding Bobby holding the murder weapons. Matt shifted forward as Foggy asked what had happened recently to re-open the case.

“Two things, actually,” Sister Elisa said, sitting back. Matt heard something clicking against the desk top. A pencil? Finger nails? He couldn’t tell, but the repetitive noise was working against his concentration. “Last week, the lead police officer who originally investigated the case back in 1989 passed away. Cancer,” she clarified with an _isn’t that a shame_ tone. “When Bobby was informed he…collapsed. It was like a dam broke. And memories came flooding back.”

“You think the officer’s death triggered it?” Matt asked, frowning.

“It seems to be the only explanation,” Sister Elisa replied. “That man was tied to the most traumatic moment of Bobby’s life. With his death, whatever role he played in Bobby’s mental damage was…released. He told us – and the police – that his mother let three men into the house and _they_ killed his parents. He recalled words used, had descriptions, and said he watched the whole thing from a hiding place inside the kitchen pantry.”

“But the police aren’t buying that,” Foggy expounded.

“At least one of them is not,” Sister Elisa replied. “A retired officer, the partner of the man who died. He believes Bobby has been…acting. All this time. All these years. Hiding behind a mental incompetence ruling.”

“I see,” Foggy replied. “You understand we’ll have to get access to the records, the case files, we’ll have to review everything.”

“Of course.”

“And there could be some pretty unpleasant information in those files,” Foggy continued.

Matt heard Sister Elisa’s chair scrape the floor as she leaned forward across the desk. “Mr. Nelson, Bobby Henley is a gentle soul. He wouldn’t…, no. He _couldn’t_ hurt anyone.” Matt heard her take a breath, the sound of it shadowed by the steady pound of her heart. “He’s a part of the St. Agnes family. And if you don’t help him, he’s going to jail for a crime that not only he did not commit, but has been haunting him, day and night, for the last twenty-six years.”

“We’ll take the case,” Matt said suddenly, surprising himself. “My partner will reach out to you for a time when we can meet with Mr. Henley.”

The relief in Sister Elisa’s voice was palpable. “Thank you, Mr. Murdock. Shall I show you out?”

“We’re good,” Matt replied, standing. He felt Foggy rise next to him. “Thank you for your time, Sister.”

“Mr. Murdock,” Sister Elisa called after him as he started to turn away. Matt resisted the urge to grimace as his head pounded in protest. “It’s good to see how successful you’ve become. When you left here, we didn’t….”

“Thank you, Sister,” Matt replied, trying to close the conversation before too much misplaced nostalgia choked the room. “I appreciate it.”

He grabbed Foggy’s elbow, unintentionally gripping the joint harder than he needed to. Foggy grunted slightly, but said nothing as he led Matt out of the office and out toward the entrance. Matt released him when he felt the draft from the door.

“Well, obviously not all of the cops are buying the faking it theory if Brett sent this our way,” Foggy said quietly as they reached the doorway. “Look, I’ll call a cab for us to—“

“I’m going to walk,” Matt told him.

“You nuts? Matty, it’s freezing out there.”

“I need to walk, Foggy,” Matt repeated. “I’ll meet you back at the office.”

He pulled the door open, registering that the temperature had indeed dropped, the rain tapering. It would be snowing soon.

“Matt I can’t just let you—“

“I’ll be fine.”

“Matt!” Foggy grabbed his arm in protest as Matt started to head through the door.

Jerking free from Foggy, Matt spat over his shoulder, “I’ll be _fine_ ,” then stepped out into the winter mist, orienting quickly toward the office. He knew exactly where he was.

He’d planned his escape from this place for nine years.

Moving quickly, mindful of the fact that Foggy could easily follow him, Matt made his way down the sidewalk and around the corner. There used to be a pharmacy on that corner, he remembered. By the smell – chemicals, cleaner, and some sort of plastic – when the door was pushed open as he passed, it was still there. He took two separate alleys before he folded his cane and tucked it into an inside pocket of his heavy jacket, removing his glasses, and shoving them into the pocket of his slacks.

Even if Foggy had been following him, Matt could tell by the heartbeats in his immediate area that he’d lost him. Pausing briefly to make sure he was alone in the alley, Matt launched himself to the top of a garbage dumpster and from there bounced from a brick wall to the retracted fire escape ladder, quickly scrambling up the outside of the metal fixture until he reached a landing and could make his way up the ladder system to the roof.

The rain had stopped. There was a pause in air; the world was holding its breath as the temperature dropped, making way for the promised snow. Matt stood perched on the edge of the roof, senses outstretched, the sounds and smells and _feel_ of the city battering his aching head and filling the empty places that the visit to St. Agnes’ had left inside.

He hadn’t realized he’d _not_ told Foggy the name of the children’s home where he’d gone after his father had been killed. It had been enough in their friendship for him to have revealed just the fact that he’d grown up in an orphanage. During the four years of university, as he prepped for admission to law school, Matt had kept to himself. He hadn’t formed friendships beyond sharing notes for exams or joining study groups. People had felt uncomfortable around him, treating him as though he were made of glass, and he’d been too accustomed to the perpetual solitude at St. Agnes’ to be really aware of his loneliness.

But within minutes of arriving at Columbia, Foggy Nelson had gotten over his walls. Actually he’d not so much _gotten over_ them as completely ignored most of them and plowed right into Matt’s comfort zone. Expounding upon the loneliness and raw emotions generated by his near decade at St. Agnes hadn’t been something Matt had really wanted to bring up. So he told Foggy what he felt his friend needed to know and moved forward from there.

He’d never intended on going back.

As the snow fell, Matt felt something burn inside of him, as though the heat of his anger could melt the flakes from the rooftop where he stood. He wasn’t even sure what exactly he was angry about. Everything. Nothing. All of it. It churned inside of him as he listened to the city – _his_ city – breathe beneath him.

A shout in the distance had his head snapping to the left. Crying echoed from a window north of him. The screech of tires to the south. He could track them, follow their fear and misery to the source. The snow fell harder, faster, until he felt it collect on his face, coating his bare head. His hands burned with the chill in the air; Matt knew he needed to move, before the snow coated the world in silence and blinded him.

Backing up, he gauged the distance to the next roof, ran, leaped, and rolled from his shoulder back to his feet. As he crossed the rooftops of Hell’s Kitchen, he listened with his whole body, as he used to when he was alone in St. Agnes.

He felt the city on his skin, in his lungs, drawing tears from his eyes.

He blinked snow from his lashes as he ran, tucked, rolled, grappled with chimneys and air conditioning units. He swung from fire escapes and scrambled back up brick walls, scraping his knuckles and stretching his bruised muscles.

At one point, he heard someone cursing in Spanish – a woman, crying and screaming as she berated someone for…were they stealing her purse? _That_ he could stop, Daredevil or not.

Matt dropped from the edge of the fire escape, just behind the would-be thief. He was completely unaware of the picture he painted, his clothes wet from rain and snow, his glasses gone and sightless eyes tracking the sound of the woman’s voice, hair plastered to his head.

When the thief moved to make a break for the opening of the alley, Matt shoved his fist out in a perfectly timed thrust to catch the man in the throat, then followed up with a knee buried deep in the other’s gut. The man struggled against him and Matt could smell sour breath and body odor, hear the man’s heart slamming against his ribs and his stomach growling as it clenched against Matt’s onslaught.

“Drop the purse,” Matt ordered, his voice low, menacing, “or you’re about to have a really bad day.”

“Who the hell are you, man?” the thief asked, his voice high and strangled as Matt shoved the flat of his forearm against the thief’s throat, pinning him against the wall of what smelled like a Chinese food restaurant.

“Nobody. I’m nobody,” Matt replied. “Just like you’ll be if you don’t do exactly as I say.”

He heard the bag hit the ground next to him and kicked it away with the side of his foot. He should let the man go now, he knew. He got what he wanted from him. He could feel the man trembling beneath his grip. He should let him go with the fear of retribution.

But he didn’t want to.

His fist curled, arm trembling with the need to pound this man’s face until it was bloody.

“Okay, man, look, okay?” the thief gasped. “I dropped the purse. I won’t do it again, I swear.”

“You swear, huh?” Matt heard the bite in his tone, the growl that was usually reserved for the Devil.

“I _swear_ , man, I was just hungry, that’s all. Just…” he gasped as Matt shifted his pressure, “…just hungry.”

Matt registered the sound of the man’s stomach gurgling once more and something in him hissed, like water splashed on a heated engine. He forced himself to uncurl his fist, his hand shaking a bit with the effort. Pressing a little harder on the man’s throat he absorbed the sound of fear that leaked through parted lips.

“If you’re hungry, go to the soup kitchen,” Matt ordered. “You bother anyone else again, I’ll know.”

It worked when he was wearing the Daredevil suit. It sounded terrifying when it was dark and the streets were haunted by shadows. Standing soaked with rain and collecting snow, blank eyes not hitting his opponent’s face, wet hair de-aging him significantly, it simply sounded crazy.

“Yeah, right, okay,” the man stuttered, pushing weakly at Matt’s arm. “I promise, man, okay?”

He’d lost the upper hand and he was risking too much exposure. Matt released the man and shoved him toward the alley’s entrance. When he was sure the thief wasn’t going to double back on him, he turned toward where he’d last registered the woman standing. The snow had started to collect in the gutters of the alley and he realized belatedly that she’d scurried away, probably terrified that the crazy blind man would turn on her next.

At least she’d grabbed her purse.

Running trembling hands through his wet hair, Matt tried to orient himself but realized that the alley and snow were dampening his abilities. Stumbling slightly as his perception skewed, he made his way to the opening of the alley, listening to the traffic, the horns, the hum of the street lights, the heartbeats…so many heartbeats flowing around him, flooding him, disorienting him.

Feeling off-balance, Matt pulled his cane from within his jacket and slipped his glasses back on his face, picking a direction and hoping for the best. He’d begun to shiver; his clothes were soaked and he felt water squishing in his wet socks with each step. The clutch of clothes against his chilled skin was irritating; he had to force himself not to tug at his sleeves or pull his shirt away from his body.

The snow fell harder and Matt walked on, refusing to accept the fact that he was lost. This was _his city_. He’d lived here his whole life, never straying further than Long Island. Snow had rattled him before, but he’d never felt this lost. Not since—

Not since he’d first arrived at St. Agnes.

Unbidden, the memory of that day slammed into him like a physical blow. He stumbled, bouncing off of someone’s shoulder, hearing someone else ask him if he was okay, finally finding a set of stairs he could tuck himself next to and try to even out his suddenly hammering breath.  Dropping his cane, Matt tucked his freezing fingers under his arms, but found little warmth there.

God, he just wanted to forget. He’d tried _so hard_ to forget.

Back against in the corner created by the building wall and staircase he’d stopped next to, Matt pressed the heels of his hands against his ears, trying desperately to pull his focus close. The muted world was incongruously loud; full of unfamiliar heartbeats and indistinguishable sounds of traffic and humanity blending to create chaos inside his head. For a one brief, blinding moment, he wished desperately to hear his father’s voice.

The police had dropped him off, the morning after it happened. He hadn’t been allowed to return to their apartment; one of the female cops had gathered all of the belongings he’d been allowed to keep at the orphanage. He’d begged for his father’s trunk when he’d not felt it among his things. They’d relented when he’d refused to come out from beneath his bed until he could feel the silk of his father’s robe beneath his fingers.

It had been so _loud_ , he remembered.

All the voices and the echoes. The singing and the prayers and the _shush-shush_ of a broom against a cement floor. There had been crying and laughing and lies swarming around him and he couldn’t pull one sound from another. Covering his ears hadn’t helped; he just heard his own body. His bones creaking, his blood rushing, his tears….

“Matthew?”

Matt flinched slightly as he allowed his hands to bounce way from his ears.

“What the devil are you doing here, son?”

He knew the voice, but it took him an inordinate amount of time to place it.

“F-father Lantom?”

There were hands on his arms, a gasp and brief recoil at the touch, then a firmer grip and he was being pulled forward.

“You’re ice cold!” Father Lantom chastised. “Why didn’t you just come inside?”

Matt allowed himself to be guided, feeling the railing lining the staircase press against his side. He’d lost all sense of direction, the snow seeming to blanket the world in stillness. Matt thrived on movement – the motion of air around objects, waves of sound bouncing off substance to create an image. A still world was a dark world. Dark enough that he hadn’t even realized that the staircase where he’d taken shelter was outside St. Patrick’s, the chapel assigned to his priest.

Not bothering with what he apparently assessed as useless words, Lantom kept Matt’s arm firmly in his grip, herding him to the kitchen where they’d shared lattes and contemplated God’s purpose for such things as angels, devils, Heaven and Hell. Matt could smell the coffee – stale enough to be yesterday’s – and felt the warmth inside the building begin to prick his chilled skin.

“Here, sit down before you shake apart,” Lantom instructed, steering Matt to a metal folding chair. He hadn’t realized he was shivering quite so violently until the man brought attention to it. “I’ll be right back.”

Matt leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees and burying his fingers in his hair, holding his aching head in the hammock of his palms. He wasn’t usually so affected by the weather; he needed to _not_ be so affected by the weather. Not if he was going to go back out tonight and find the source of the cries for help he could hear even now. Not if he was going to stop the Dust dealers from killing more people in his city.

“Here.”

Matt jerked, startled, as Father Lantom draped a coarse towel smelling strongly of lavender around him.

“Towel off a bit and I’ll see if I can find some dry clothes.”

“I’m f-fine, Father,” Matt protested. His teeth were chattering ridiculously loud inside his head.

“Your lips are blue,” Lantom informed him.

Matt drew his head back in surprise. He didn’t realize he’d allowed himself to get that cold. Properly subdued, he straightened and began to dry his wet hair. As the room settled around him, he sensed Father Lantom bringing something into the room, setting it down at his feet and turning a blast of welcomed, warm air toward him.

“All I have are robes,” Lantom told him. “You can wear them while your clothes dry.”

“Robes?” Matt asked, suddenly remembering silk beneath his fingers and the outline of letters spelling out _Battling Jack Murdock_.

“You need help changing?”

Matt heard the _huft_ of something heavy and soft being dropped on the table to his right and detected the scent of wool and mothballs. He hated wool. It felt like barbed wire against his skin. But he supposed he’d hate hypothermia or pneumonia more, so he drew the side of his mouth up in what he hoped passed as a grateful smile.

“No,” Matt shook his head.

“I’ll be just outside. Stay close to that heater,” Lantom said, and Matt listened to the heavy slap of his shoes as he crossed the room and let himself out through the sliding wooden door.

For a moment, Matt was tempted to simply leave. He could find the back exit from here easily enough. But a harsh shiver cramped his muscles and he sighed, relenting. Stubbornness had its place, and freezing to death in a doorway like the Little Matchstick Girl was not how he planned to go out.

Standing, Matt felt his body stretch uncomfortably, his muscles constricting to retain as much heat as possible. He pulled off his clothes, laying them across chairs near the heater Father Lantom had brought, then wrapped the robe around himself, clutching it closed at his side when he couldn’t find the fastener. The wool material scratched against his skin, causing him to clench his jaw against a sensation just this side of pain.

“You decent?”

“Yes,” Matt answered, standing near the heater and listening as Father Lantom entered.

He heard the man cross the room to where the smell of coffee was emanating, mutter a soft curse, then begin to prepare two lattes. Matt focused his senses on tracking the man’s movements, listening only to the sound of coffee brewing, spoons in cups, Father Lantom shifting his stance. Nothing else mattered for the moment.

Slowly, he felt his body responding to the warmth: heavy, uncooperative limbs moving when commanded once more. Gradually feeling returned to his fingertips, his muscles not quaking quite so violently.

When Father Lantom handed Matt the warm mug of coffee, he expected the man to ask him what had led him to huddle, wet and freezing, outside the rectory. The silence was startling. Matt sipped the coffee, letting his body draw in heat from the warm air and resisting the urge to squirm beneath the uncomfortable robe.

After several moments where their heartbeats were the only sounds in the room, Matt took a breath.

“You get lonely here, Father?”

He heard Lantom take a low, shallow breath. “Loneliness is a common human experience,” he began. “Everyone feels it at some point in their lives, even when surrounded by people.”

Matt nodded, thinking. “Do you think it’s our fault if we’re lonely?”

“I think it’s within our power to change our situation,” Father Lantom replied.

Matt pressed his lips together, sorting his thoughts, trying to pin the one safe enough to bring out into the open. Certainly not the anger, the rage, the desire for retribution that dogged his steps even when he wasn’t lurking in the shadows of Hell’s Kitchen. The only thing he could find within the churn of pain inside of him was the years of loneliness that threatened to suffocate him.

“I tried that,” Matt replied. “But sometimes the past…it…it finds me.”

“And is your present as lonely as your past?”

Matt thought about his answer carefully. He had Foggy now. He had Karen, and Claire, and even Father Lantom. There were people in his life who knew him—some who knew more than others—and thought him important. There were people who assured him that he wasn’t alone, and yet none of them stood on the rooftops with him, none heard the pain of the city, none faced drug dealers and the human traffickers and the cruelty Matt waded through every night.

He stood among his friends—his family—alone, yearning for contact even as they wrapped their arms around him. In many ways, he was lonelier now than he had ever been at the orphanage. Only now, it was by choice rather than circumstance.

And he didn’t know which was worse.

“Sometimes,” he finally replied.

He sensed Father Lantom nod. “Where did you land after your father was killed?”

Matt always appreciated how Father Lantom never minced words. It was harder to bear the impact of a sentence that dodged what had happened to him than one that recognized it.

“St. Agnes,” Matt replied.

“Were there others like you?”

“Blind like me, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“No, I was—“ _alone_.

Father Lantom nodded once more. “And remembering that,” he said quietly, “is what makes you feel angry?”

Matt lifted his chin. He’d never actually _said_ that he was angry.

“I can see it, Matthew,” Father Lantom said quietly. “Each time you come in here, each time we talk. The anger in you, it…it’s like an open wound. I simply wondered if it stemmed from St. Agnes.”

“Not exactly,” Matt shifted, moving a bit away from the heater as his limbs began to thaw.

The world made him angry. Remembering St. Agnes just made him hurt.

When Matt didn’t continue, Father Lantom spoke up. “There’s a passage in John that says the root problem of our loneliness is not the absence of people in our lives, but the presence of sin in our hearts that separates us from God and other people.”

Matt lips curled up in a humorless smile. “I suppose that’s true.”

“Do you need confession, Matthew?”

Matt shook his head. “Not yet, Father. But…,” he lifted his chin and offered the man a small smile; “I know where to come when I do.”

Father Lantom was quiet for a long moment, long enough that Matt began to grow uncomfortable, not sure what to discern from the other man’s steady heartbeat. He heard the man turn away, toward the table where the coffee was housed, and used that moment to grab his still-damp pants and begin to dress.

“Since that first day you came in here,” Father Lantom suddenly spoke up, not turning around, his voice reverberating off the cement-blocked walls to surge through Matt’s honed perception, “I’ve thought about the challenge and opportunity you pose for me.”

Matt let the robe drop to the floor and collected his shirt, shivering at the loss of heat and the still-cold material that slid over his arms. He didn’t reply, waiting the man out, anxiety twisting a chord tight inside of his chest. Father Lantom was moving back across the room, fresh coffee in his mug, and handed Matt his jacket.

“Your questions are good for me, Matthew,” Lantom said, not relinquishing his hold on the jacket as Matt reached for it. They stood an arm’s length apart, Matt spine tensing as he waited for the rest of Father Lantom’s sentence. “I can only hope my answers offer you some comfort.”

Matt held the damp jacket close. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to be comforted, Father.”

“Why would you think that?”

Matt frowned, searching for a way to explain a feeling. An impression.

“You asked me once,” Lantom continued, “why God put the devil in you.”

Matt nodded.

“You remember what I told you?”

“Yeah,” Matt half-grinned. “You said nothing drives people to church faster than the Devil snapping at their heels.”

“Yes, well,” Father Lantom seemed to sink in on himself a bit as he stepped back from the heater. “I also said it could be you calling on the better angels of your nature. Maybe this feeling of loneliness is simply you searching for a reason to continue to do what you’re doing.”

“I know why I do it,” Matt protested, pulling on his jacket and suppressing a shiver. “If you heard all the pain that I do, Father, you wouldn’t question it either.”

“Whose pain, Matthew?” Father Lantom posed, and Matt felt his own heart trip slightly. “The people of the city? Or yours?”

Matt frowned again, confused. “I’m not—“

“You _are_ in pain, Matthew,” Lantom interrupted. “It bleeds from you, calling to me just as surely as those voices you hear throughout the city.”

Matt took a step back, feeling along the edge of the table for his glasses. He didn’t want to know this, didn’t want to accept that someone heard the same cries from him that he heard from the city. He didn’t know what to do with that information.

“You see, that’s what pain does: it strips away the pretense, the lies, and shows us what is on the inside of each of us.”

Matt found his glasses, sliding them in place as is lip curled around a bitter retort. “Looks like it’s pretty obvious what’s under my lies, then, Father. And it’s no angel.”

He turned and made his way confidently toward the back door of the basement where he knew a set of narrow, cement stairs would take him back up to the street. He only paused a moment when he heard Father Lantom whisper, “I wouldn’t be so sure.”


	4. Karen

**

**Karen**

“ _Five hours_!”

Karen flinched at Foggy’s bellow. Pausing in the doorway that led to what passed as a kitchen for their little office, she turned and crossed her arms, and pinning Foggy with what she hoped was a patient and understanding look, while irritation and worry pressed against her ribcage.

“How about we take it down a notch, huh?”

Foggy was pacing, jacket having long-since been discarded, tie loosened, hair rather spectacularly disheveled from running his fingers through it repeatedly. He looked rattled when he’d returned alone from their meeting and went downhill from there at an alarming rate. Karen had been perplexed at Foggy’s report that Matt had decided to walk, but had learned in her months working at Nelson & Murdock, there were some decisions these two made that simply were not questioned, no matter how much sense they did _not_ make.

“And he’s not answering his phone—either of them!”

Karen frowned. Since when did Matt have two phones?

“He just needs some space—“

“No, he needs to fucking man up and tell me shit so I don’t act like an asshole and send him on the flashback from hell because I don’t know enough _not_ to take a case that happens to be anchored in one of the worst damn times of his life!”

Foggy stopped moving for a moment and took a breath.

“Well, that was impressive. Sure you couldn’t work a few more expletives in there?”

At that, Foggy seemed to deflate, running his fingers through his hair again. He dropped a heavy hand onto the box of files and books that Karen had spent the last five hours accumulating while Foggy wore a trench in the office floor.

There were a few more files Foggy didn’t know about, shoved into Karen’s conveniently over-sized purse. Files that Brett had provided to her as a favor since Nelson & Murdock agreed to take on the Henley case; files that were less about Bobby Henley and more about the history of St. Agnes Orphanage.

When Foggy’s exhale trembled in the air between them, Karen bit her lip and pushed away from the doorway of Matt’s office. She approached Foggy cautiously. She could practically feel the tension rolling off of him.

“He’s okay, Foggy,” Karen said softly, placing a hand on his arm and  rubbing  gently. “It’s Matt. He doesn’t make crazy decisions.”

Foggy huffed slightly and shook his head. “It’s been snowing for over two hours now.”

Karen tilted her head in question. “So?”

“Matt gets all…turned around in the snow, especially when there’s a lot of it.”

Karen swallowed, but refused to relinquish her role of Coherent Thinker quite yet.

“Tell you what,” she offered. “If he’s not back in 30 minutes we’ll go out and retrace the path between here and St. Agnes.”

The office door rattled as if on cue. Karen and Foggy flinched in unison, turning to stare as the door opened and Matt stepped through looking like someone had dropped him in a tub of ice water and then wrung him out. He was pale, shivering slightly, and feeling his way along the doorframe into the room, hands empty of his cane. Karen couldn’t help the soft gasp at the sight of him and instinctively reached out to stretch an arm across Foggy’s chest to hold him back.

Matt didn’t look like he could take a strong gust of wind at the moment, let alone the wrath of a worried best friend.

“Matty?”

“Hey,” Matt replied, a sheepish smile tipping up the corners of his mouth as he shut the door behind him and leaned against it. “Um…sorry I took so long.”

“You didn’t answer your phone,” Foggy said, still standing trapped behind Karen’s outstretched arm. “I was…concerned.”

Karen dropped her arm, amusement at Foggy’s subdued response twisting her lips. Matt seemed surprised at Foggy’s comment about his phone and he fished it out of the pocket of his wrinkled slacks.

“I, uh…I turned it off. I guess.”

“You okay, Matt?” Karen asked, concerned by the man’s hesitancy and confusion.

“Yeah, just cold,” he said.

She could see a tremor run through him as he spoke. Stepping over to the coat rack, she grabbed a heavy scarf she’d brought earlier in the week anticipating the cold and cast her eyes around the interior of the office for anything like a blanket or even a heavier towel.

“Well,” Foggy sighed, moving forward. “You just spent four hours outside in the middle of winter, so.”

“I stopped over at St. Pat’s,” Matt told him, handing Foggy his jacket as though he’d seen the man reach out. It always surprised Karen how spatially aware Matt could be, especially around Foggy. There were times she felt he could actually see them. “Accidentally.”

“How do you _accidentally_ go into a church?” Foggy asked, hanging Matt’s jacket up and turning toward his office.

“It started snowing,” Matt replied, stiffening as Karen draped the scarf around his shoulders and tucked it between the buttons on the front of his shirt. “Is it my color?” he teased.

“Brings out the shade of your glasses,” she replied with an answering smile.

“Thanks, Karen,” he said, moving stiffly toward his office as Foggy headed for the kitchen.

Foggy tossed an _I told you so_ look over his shoulder as he called out to Matt, “How about I make you some coffee and we go over the files Karen rounded up for us?”

“Sounds good,” Matt nodded and Karen watched him sink into his desk chair as if he were 90 years old.

“You sure you don’t want to go home and…I don’t know…change clothes or warm up or something?” Karen asked, following him into the office with the box of files and books, setting it on the edge of his desk.

He was paler than usual, his lips like a slash of red beneath the dark glasses, and she could see scuffed knuckles on his right hand. It could have been from his treacherous journey home from the orphanage, she knew, but the marks looked older, and there was yellowed bruising around several of the abrasions. Too late, she realized Matt had answered her and was now staring in her general direction, head tilted in that way he had as though he were listening to something much further away than her.

“Uh, sorry, so that’s a no?” She guessed.

He chuffed slightly, a small smile ticking up the corner of his mouth in that way that made her skin tingle just a little, and said, “Yes, that’s a no.”

Foggy brought in coffee and a bag of bagels that Karen had picked up that morning.

“I know you haven’t eaten today,” he said.

Matt opened his mouth to protest but his stomach loudly betrayed him.

“We get through the prelims on this case, I’ll buy you dinner,” Foggy promised.

“It’s a deal,” Matt nodded, accepting the coffee and digging a bagel from the depths of the bag. He bit into it and sigh a little as he ate, keeping his free hand wrapped around the coffee mug. “Where did these files come from, the library?”

Karen lifted an eyebrow. “No, the files are from the cold case archives. There are some library books in there, though. How’d you know that?”

Matt lifted a shoulder. “Library books have that…smell, you know?”

“What, like…,” Karen lifted one of the books, sniffing it. “Old paper?”

“Cigarettes, old coffee, dirt, cooking, other people’s hands,” Matt muttered, setting down the half-eaten bagel and gulping the coffee.

Karen looked at him in naked surprise. Holding the book close to her nose again, she realized she could detect a whiff of stale cigarettes, but none of the rest of what Matt had mentioned. She looked over at Foggy, but realized that rather than look surprised at Matt’s insane olfactory skills, he was looking rather distressed at the way Matt was gulping down the coffee.

“Why library books anyway?” Foggy asked.

Karen shrugged. “Brett just said that the cops who originally investigated the case thought these books had something to do with Henley’s motives. Guess he’d checked them out at one time? Not sure.”

“Well, let’s figure it out,” Matt declared, clearing his throat and tugging the scarf Karen had tucked around him loose. He didn’t remove it, though. Simply let it hang from his shoulders.

As she got her notebook and settled in, Karen didn’t miss the not-so-subtle way Foggy continued to dart looks over at Matt, as though worried his friend would vanish. Matt was oblivious, of course, and seemed to shift gears from wet, forgotten puppy to fully-capable lawyer the moment he opened the first file on his Braille-enabled laptop.

There was something there, though. Something that Karen couldn’t quite put her finger on, but had been bothering her since Matt’s “car accident.” Something they were protecting, though from whom, she wasn’t sure.

For two men whose livelihoods depended on being observant and finding and defending the truth, they were terrible liars. She wasn’t sure what Matt was involved in—domestic abuse of some kind? Some underground Fight Club, maybe?—but there was no way one man drew all that physical damage to himself just by being clumsy. No stranger to random acts of violence herself, Karen was convinced someone had broken into his apartment and beat him up that day she visited, but he kept quiet about it.

Whatever it was, she was determined to find out. Her bosses had apparently overlooked her tenacity when it came to solving a puzzle. With Fisk behind bars, and without Ben’s steady influence grounding her, Karen had found herself seeking out her next riddle. Hell’s Kitchen was too quiet when she simply focused on herself, and there was too much darkness of her own making around her.

The files on St. Agnes that she’d tucked away had convinced her the next solvable mystery must be Matt Murdock. She had a number of the pieces already; she simply needed to find the right order to put them in. She’d found the name of the woman who not only admitted him to St. Agnes, but had apparently tried to navigate an adoption at one point, citing _lack of social skills_ and _irreparable psychological damage_ as reasons for the adoption not going through.

She’d learned about Matt’s dad through her own curiosity and from working with Ben Urich. The research skills she’d learned from Ben would serve her well working with a man purposely shrouded in secrecy. Not long after leaving Matt sitting alone and bruised in his apartment, holding a balloon with a monkey on it, she’d decided to start digging into his past. She’d discovered Jack Murdock’s boxing record, the story of his unsolved murder, and the fate of his only son and the reason Matt was so close to Foggy: he literally had no one else.

Why Foggy was so close to Matt, aside from the innocent and genuine basis that was simply friendship, eluded her. He certainly didn’t seem to need Matt the way Matt obviously needed him.

Foggy loved to talk, especially after a few tequila shots at Josie’s. He shared stories  about his robust family, his parent’s disenchantment with his chosen profession, his sibling’s choices in mates—approved or unapproved—and she reveled in all of them, being somewhere in the middle of her two friends: she had a family, but she wanted nothing to do with them. Not anymore.

Listening to them now, as they worked through the specifics of the Henley case, Karen picked up on a few nuances. For example, Matt was anxious. His fingers didn’t stop moving, even when he wasn’t reading the Braille print-outs. They tugged at his wrinkled shirt sleeves, ran in trembling, repetitive patterns down his slacks and worried the worn edge of the desk.

Matt didn’t _get_ anxious. The only time she’d seen the calm façade crack had been the day he’d confessed to her that he couldn’t take another step alone. She could still feel the way he trembled against her, arms crushing her tight as though she were the only anchor in a sea of chaos.

“We need to interview this…, uh…Officer Tosky,” Matt said after nearly two hours of taking apart the case and breaking down the elements. “He’s the only one left who was there that day, and there’s nothing—aside from Bobby Henley’s unreliable testimony—that says anyone aside from Bobby and his parents were in that room.”

Foggy sighed and rolled his neck. “Either this is all a big cover-up, or—“

“Or Bobby is lying.”

There was a hard edge to Matt’s voice; one Karen wasn’t used to hearing when he spoke of their clients.

“Have you talked to Bobby Henley?” she asked.

“Not yet,” Foggy replied.

“I can set up another meeting out at St. Agnes—“

“No,” Matt broke in, shaking his head once. “He needs to come here.”

“Okay, but it sounds like the guy is practically a shut-in,” Foggy pointed out. “Maybe I could just go, and—“

“It needs to be both of us,” Matt said, lifting his chin and facing Foggy’s general direction. “And it needs to be here.”

“You’re testing him,” Karen realized, seeing a strange, silent conversation transpire between Foggy and Matt in that moment. “You want him off balance, out of his environment.”

“Something like that,” Matt nodded. With a sigh, he sat back, carding his hair with his fingers and drawing Karen’s attention once more to the bruised knuckles. “Look, if this guy is innocent, we’re going to do our level-best to defend him.”

“But?” Karen prompted.

“The law is absolute,” Matt continued. “And with what we have before us right now, I can see why the cops think Henley’s been hiding behind a trumped up insanity plea.”

“Karen,” Foggy said, though his eyes never left Matt’s profile. “Can you please set up two meetings for us – one with Bobby Henley and one with, uh…whosit? Tolstoy?”

“Frank Tosky,” Karen and Matt corrected him in unison.

“Right,” Foggy nodded, pointing at both. “In the meantime, I’ll go through the character testimony of the Sisters at St. Agnes and you, my friend,” he reached out and clapped a large hand on Matt’s shoulder, “will do that thing you do and find precedence for our case.”

Matt nodded, though to Karen it looked as if he had zero intention of doing what Foggy asked. His chin was tipped down and he was plucking at his wrinkled slacks in that way he had when he wanted to be anywhere but where he was. She frowned, gripping her pen a bit tighter to keep herself from reaching over and grasping his hand in reassurance.

“After dinner,” Foggy concluded.

On impulse, Karen shook her head. “Gonna have to take a rain check this time.”

Matt brought his head up. “You got plans?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” she smiled, blanking her eyes and keeping her expression mild. “When I picked up the files earlier, one of the cops at the precinct asked me to dinner.”

“You have a date? With a _cop_?” Foggy squeaked.

“What’s his name?” Matt demanded, sounding way too much like a protective older brother for her liking.

“Sam,” she replied smoothly. “Sam Parker.”

Matt tilted his chin up and the motion caught Foggy’s eye. Inexplicably, Foggy darted his eyes from Matt to Karen and back, before he sat back and shook his head.

“Karen, you don’t—“

“Be careful,” Matt interrupted. “Fisk’s crew might be down, but the streets are still dangerous.”

“Well, who better to keep me safe than a cop?” Karen smiled. “Only way I’d be safer is if I went out with Daredevil.”

Foggy began coughing, drawing an exasperated sigh from Karen. She smiled indulgently and stood up, gathering her notes and the loose files.

“One of these days, Foggy,” Karen scolded, “you’re going to have to admit he’s not all bad.”

Foggy nodded and cleared his throat, not responding.

“Have fun, Karen,” Matt said politely. “We’ll see you in the morning.”

She smiled at him, though she knew he couldn’t see it, and headed for her desk. They were suspiciously quiet as she gathered her coat and purse, calling goodbye. As soon as she closed the door behind her, she heard Foggy exclaim, “You _knew_ she was lying, didn’t you?”

“Foggy—“

“You could tell. I _know_ you could tell, you always do that chin tilt thing—“

“Quiet,” Matt ordered, his voice sharp. “Not yet.”

Foggy quieted and with a start Karen realized that they knew she was standing outside the door. Puzzled and not a little unnerved, she headed down to the street and ducked quickly into the subway entrance. Something was going on with the two of them and she was pretty sure it not only centered on Matt, but on Matt’s time at St. Agnes.

It took her three subway stops to get within walking distance of the children’s home. Pausing at the front door, she took a breath. What she was doing was borderline unethical and crossed the boundaries of invasion of privacy, but if Matt wasn’t going to talk, she was going to have to find out what was going on some other way.

Besides, the case they were working on had St. Agnes at ground zero. The more she knew about their practices for the children under their care, the better she would be able to help Matt and Foggy on the Henley case.

Or so she reasoned.

Taking a steadying breath, she pressed the buzzer to the right of the door. She was greeted by a thin, fortyish man with a sallow face and dark eyes, wearing ill-fitting clothes. She smiled at him, hiding her nervousness. This side trip of hers hadn’t been well planned.

“Hi, um,” she tucked her hair behind her ear. “I work for Nelson & Murdock and I need to follow up on some—“

“Sure, come on in,” the man interrupted, a sunny smile transforming his face. “You must be freezing.”

“Thank you,” Karen replied, stepping into the main entrance of the children’s home, her eyes scanning the walls full of paintings of Jesus with children at his feet, Mary with her arms open and other paintings with similar themes. A few older kids walked in from what looked to be a courtyard and crossed the room, casting curious looks her way as they tugged gloves from their hands and rubbed at their cold-stung noses. “I need to speak with Sister Angelica.”

The man tipped his head in puzzlement. “No, you mean Sister Elisa.”

Karen smiled politely. “No, my bosses spoke with her earlier. I need to follow up with Sister Angelica.”

“You don’t need to see her,” the man replied, shaking his head, still looking puzzled. “She’s not my guardian. She doesn’t even like me very much.”

Karen leaned slightly forward. “Are you Bobby Henley?”

His smile lit his face once more and she found herself feeling a bit like she was speaking to a child rather than a grown man.

“That’s me!”

Karen held out her hand. “It’s great to meet you, Bobby. I’m Karen.”

“Hiya, Karen.”

“I do actually need to speak to Sister Angelica, though,” she said, arranging her face into one of apology. “This time it’s not about you, it’s about one of my bosses.”

“You mean Matt Murdock.”

She smiled, hoping she effectively masked her surprise. “Yes, do you know him?”

“Sure I do,” Bobby replied. “Everyone here does.”

Karen frowned slightly. “They do?”

Bobby shrugged and looked suddenly shy. “Well, they tell me they do. I don’t know if I remember him or not. I mean, sometimes I do. I remember this little kid everyone said saved some old guy’s life then went blind, but then I don’t remember him and everyone is telling me I do.”

Karen blinked, absorbing the torrent of words, remembering the case information that detailed Bobby’s memory affliction.

“I understand,” she nodded. “Would you be able to tell me where I could find Sister Angelica?”

“Why do you need to talk to her?”

Karen took a slow breath, wondering for a moment at the patience the Sisters who worked with Bobby on a daily basis had to possess.

“I need to talk to her about my boss,” she reminded him patiently.

“Well, it’s suppertime.”

Karen waited, watching the man as he leaned on the broom handle in his hands, blinking at her with guileless eyes. When she realized he wasn’t going to offer any more information, she decided to change tactics. Smiling sweetly, she looked at the broom in his hand.

“Sister Elisa said you’ve been working here since you were a kid, is that right?”

Bobby nodded. “I like it here. It’s quiet.”

Karen mimicked his nod. “Almost like a church.”

“Yeah. Except…no singing.”

“Bobby!”

Karen and Bobby both jumped at the sharp report of his name reverberating within the cavernous room. Bobby ducked his head, offering Karen a shy, almost secret smile, and pushed his broom around her back toward an opened arched door where a woman in dark blue habit stood waiting.

“You are not to open the door without one of us with you.” The woman’s severe voice cracked through the quiet like a slap. “Do I need to post the sign again to remind you?”

“No,” Bobby shook his head. “I’ll go sweep the big room.”

“You do that.”

Karen waited until Bobby maneuvered the broom around the woman, then cleared her throat softly. The woman began approaching and it wasn’t until she was only a few yards away that Karen saw the age that creased her face. There was a coldness to the woman’s blue eyes that had memories of her youth, raised in the church among rigid doctrines and unforgiving parameters, flooding up through Karen’s mind causing her to regret this rash decision and wishing she really did have a date with Officer Sam Parker.

Even if he was a sixty-year-old, near-retiree working in the cold case file storage bunker.

“What can I help you with, young woman?”

“I, uh, I need to speak with Sister Angelica.”

The chin lifted, nearly obscuring the cold eyes from Karen’s view. “What do you want with her?”

“I need to,” Karen took a slow breath, curling her fingers against her palm, “Talk with her about Matt Murdock.”

At this, something mercurial shifted in the woman’s eyes. She tilted her head a bit and the thin slash across her face where her lips were softened slightly. “I am Sister Angelica,” she replied.

_I was afraid of that_ , Karen thought.

“Is there some place we could talk?” she asked.

Sister Angelica led her to a small room adorned with only a few book shelves and two upholstered chairs. Karen caught sight of the gold placard sign on the wall before she entered: _Visiting Room_. It felt colder in here than the lobby area; if this was where potential families first met, it was no wonder so few were successful.

“You are a friend of Matthew’s?” Sister Angelica inquired the moment the door was shut.

Karen jumped slightly. “Yes. Or, rather, I work for him. At his law firm.”

“So, it’s a lawyer is it?”

“Matt—er, Mr. Murdock, that is,” Karen smiled nervously. “He is a lawyer at Nelson & Murdock. My name is Karen Page.”

“Won’t you sit?”

It wasn’t a request. Karen’s knees bent of their own accord. Sister Angelica sank onto the opposite chair and she continued to stare at Karen, waiting.

“Our firm is taking on the Bobby Henley case,” Karen began, but stopped when she saw something odd flicker across Sister Angelica’s stone-like expression. It was too quick to place, but Karen filed that bit of information away for later. “It’s important that we understand the extent to which Mr. Murdock and Mr. Henley may have interacted.”

“Matthew cannot tell you this himself?”

Karen refused to flinch. “He doesn’t remember the name Bobby Henley.”

“Well, no, he wouldn’t would he?” Sister Angelica murmured, her eyes focusing on the floral printed carpet beneath their feet. “We kept him separate from the other children. Even after….”

“After?” Karen prompted softly when the woman didn’t continue. She imagined keeping Bobby separate from the others would have been for his own safety with his memory issues, but wanted to hear the details from the woman who’d been there.

Sister Angelica brought her chin up sharply, her eyes practically glinting. “Matthew was troubled. The loss of his father, the relocation, it’s a common story among the children here. But Matthew was…complicated.”

Karen swallowed her surprise at the fact that Sister Angelica had been referring to _Matt_ and not _Bobby_. She held herself completely still, waiting for more.

“At one time, I thought I’d found a mentor for the boy. The Sisters allowed it, thinking it might help…focus him a bit.”

When she paused, shaking her head slowly, Karen leaned forward. “And did it?”

“Having that man in this place was…disruptive. He was irreverent. Violent, even.”

Karen frowned. “You let a…a _violent_ man mentor a little boy?”

“Matthew Murdock was no little boy, even when he was young,” Sister Angelica murmured. “Blind, perhaps, but he was touched. By the Devil, some claimed.”

Karen eased back, finding balance in the ridiculousness of the Sister’s claims. “Touched by the devil.”

“He knew things. Things he could only know if he’d been present where we knew he was not. He moved through this place as though he could see _through_ the walls. He wasn’t…right.”

“He was a _child_ ,” Karen stated, hearing the flat edge to her voice and not caring. “He had _no one_ and you left him alone except for the mentorship of a man you said was violent. And you wonder why he wasn’t…right?”

Sister Angelica looked at her sharply. “You have no room to judge. You weren’t here, you couldn’t know.”

Karen stood up, feeling her cheeks flame, her eyes burning with indignation. “I know the man who survived this place. I know the man who put himself through college and law school and now works to defend those who have nothing left.” She thought of the fear that had gripped her when she sat alone in her jail cell, erased not by the caring phone call of a worried parent, but by the calm, steady reassurance of Matt Murdock’s promise. “He gives people hope. It’s too bad you couldn’t have seen that when he was here.”

Karen stepped past the Sister and reached for the door knob of the visiting room.

“I will allow him to defend Bobby Henley,” Sister Angelica said in a voice so empty it seemed to echo. “But if you have not seen it by now, you will. That boy has the Devil in him. It fuels him. _Drives_ him.” She looked up at Karen. “And when it destroys him, it will burn down all those around him.”


	5. Foggy

**

**Foggy**

Four days.

Building a case for the defense—investigating all possible avenues the prosecution might use to gain a guilty verdict—hadn’t been this hard since they were in law school. Karen had helped Foggy create what she’d called a ‘murder board’ to track and connect the information they’d been able to pull together from the cold case files, including possible identifications of the three men Bobby Henley claimed killed his parents as well as an ever-growing list of possible suspects. It had been mainly for the two of them since Matt maintained his own method of keeping information clear.

Foggy’s eyes rested on the names under the suspect list, lingering on Sister Elisa, then tracking down to names Karen had pulled from the files, including the cop who’d been the original arresting officer and a woman by the name of Sophia Messala, one of Bobby Henley’s childhood friends. Clues led to incomplete information which led to dead ends. Foggy wasn’t built for this many late nights in a row; it hadn’t worked in his favor in law school and certainly wasn’t keeping him sharp today.

Because if it had, he would have made the connection days ago.

“We’re digging in the wrong place,” he said loudly to the only other occupant of their office.

Matt didn’t even flinch.

Foggy could tell his friend was focused on what he was reading. His fingers were ceaseless in their motion across the Braille, his shoulders tight, pale face tense, sporting a newly formed, rather nasty bruise along his right cheek bone. Foggy would have felt a modicum of sympathy if he’d suspected the weariness radiating from his friend had anything to do with the Henley case.

However, if Foggy were a betting man, he’d have won a fortune on the wager that Matt had been out late over the past four nights clad in blood-red and horns.

“This isn’t about _who_ those men were Bobby says he saw,” Foggy continued, eyes pinned to Matt’s face, “it’s about _why_ his parents were killed in the first place.”

Matt lips tightened almost imperceptibly.

“Matt!”

His voice was sharp and accompanied by a loud rap of knuckles against the desktop. He was rewarded with an abrupt flinch as Matt’s hands bounced up, away from what he was reading. Matt lifted his chin, taking in a stuttering breath as if he’d forgotten that was what his lungs were supposed to do.

“What?”

“Where the hell are you? ‘Cause you’re not _here_.”

“I’m….”

Foggy swore Matt actually glanced around, as if taking in his surroundings.

“What’s going on with you?”

Matt licked his lips. “I’m working on something.”

“Something more important than our case?” Foggy huffed.

“Maybe.”

Foggy ran his fingers through his hair, tugging on the ends just a bit as his gaze slide out through Matt’s office door and toward Karen’s empty desk.

 _Do not beat up the blind guy_ , he coached himself silently. _Do not beat up the blind guy who could kill you with his pinky_.

“Want to clue me in?”

Matt’s mouth quirked up in what might pass for a smile on opposite day. “I…can’t. Not yet, Foggy.”

“Thought we talked about this,” Foggy replied quietly. “Secrets are bad.”

“It’s not a secret, I just—“ Matt sank back against his chair, pulling his dark glasses from his face and dropping them to the desk. He sighed as he rubbed the heel of his hand against the bridge of his nose.

Foggy simply waited. Finally, after what felt like an endless string of steady heartbeats, Matt sighed and dropped his hand.

“You know that drug that’s been showing up everywhere?”

Foggy frowned. Where was this going? “Yeah, read something about it the other day.  Dust or something? People ending up in the hospital.”

Matt nodded. “They found more it just three blocks from here.”

Foggy lifted an eyebrow, rolling his neck. “You mean _Daredevil_ found it.”

Matt tipped his head as though in concession, and shifted his face away from Foggy.

“Is that what you’ve been chasing all week?” Foggy asked, a note of bitterness slipping into his tone. This was a big case, a tough case, and having Matt’s attention split was not helping matters.

“It’s being shipped in from outside of Hell’s Kitchen,” Matt continued. “The drop points are all along the harbor.”

“I take it that’s how you got that latest _I walked into a door_ shiner,” Foggy motioned toward his friend’s face, knowing Matt would pick up on the air currents. Or whatever.

“I’ve been careful.”

“I need to buy you a Braille dictionary,” Foggy muttered standing and pressing his fists against his aching back. “Think you’ll find you’ve got the definition of _careful_ all wrong.”

“They have to be getting it in through the Italians. With the Russians all burned out by Fisk, there’s a power vacuum—“

“Matt!”

Matt’s head snapped up toward Foggy’s voice.

“What are you even _saying_?”

Matt’s expression tightened, closing off between one heartbeat and the next, which just managed to piss Foggy off that much more. He leaned forward, hands flat against Matt’s desk.

“We’ve got an _actual_ case right now.”

“I realize that.”

“Well, how ‘bout this? You realize for just about the last _week_ you’ve been more or less MIA?”

Matt pushed away from his desk, hands searching for where he’d dropped his glasses. Foggy felt himself snarl, hating the fact that Matt was using the glasses as protection against Foggy’s ire.

The man had too many masks.

“I’ve been here, same as you.”

“No. _Not_ the same.” Foggy moved toward the doorway, standing with his hands at his waist, effectively cutting off Matt’s exit. “You’ve been somewhere else the whole time. You weren’t even with me when I interviewed Tolstoy.”

“Tosky,” Matt corrected automatically.

“Whatever. Not to mention we’ve been at this a week and still haven’t deposed our actual _client_.”

“He’s avoiding us,” Matt stated.

Foggy chuffed. “Hello, kettle. This is pot. You’re black.”

“Look, Foggy, this…this drug thing…. It’s important.”

“ _So is this_!” Foggy yelled, surprising himself with the ferocity behind the words.

Matt pulled away slightly, rising from his chair and moving around to the other side of his desk, one hand at his waist, the other clutching the back of his neck. Foggy recognized the defensive posture from years working through various debates, but ignored it. He was tired, frustrated, and, _dammit_ , they were partners.

He’d been working like hell to get some traction in this bitch of a case over the last four days and even when Matt was sitting across from him he’d been somewhere else. This wasn’t the firm of Nelson Does It Alone. It was Nelson _& Murdock_.

“You want this law firm, Matt? You want to keep us going?”

“You know I do,” Matt replied softly, face directed at the floor, lips tight.

Foggy shook his head. “No, I don’t know that. All I know is that you are wicked smart when it comes to the law and you are _wasting_ it running around getting your ass handed to you every night.”

Matt’s brows drew close, but he didn’t protest. Foggy didn’t exactly let him.

“I’ve been trying to understand all of this. I really have. Trying to see what it is you need to do… _why_ you need to do it. And I just…I don’t get it, Matty. I don’t.”

Words seemed to be simply falling out of his mouth of their own accord.

“You have a chance to make a difference—a _real_ difference, without getting killed for it—and you…you _ignore it_ to go out beating up bad guys. ‘Cause you don’t want to stop. Filing the motions and building the cases and defending the innocent…it’s just not enough for you.”

He ignored the way Matt had backed up until he was against the wall, the way his breath seemed to hammer from him as though he’d been running a marathon. He was on a roll; this office was his confessional. He wasn’t about to stop now.

“You just have to get bloody, don’t you? I mean, for what? To _atone_ for something you never did wrong in the first place?” Foggy was across the room, inside of Matt’s space, his voice bouncing off of the bare walls of the office and practically striking Matt like physical blows. “You’ve got no idea what’s going on in our case right now, do you? Our _case_. The thing that’s going to keep our law firm alive? Keep food on our tables?”

“Yes, I do.” Matt broke in, his voice deeper, almost fierce. It startled Foggy into a brief silence.

“What do you mean, you do?”

“I know what’s going on in the case,” Matt said, pushing away from the wall as though his body was too heavy for his arms. “I know you interviewed Tosky. That he told you he’d been watching the Henleys for a while before the murder. I know he thinks they were into something with the Messala family.”

Foggy backed up a step. Then another. There was something dangerous about Matt’s bearing, the set of his jaw.

“I know that St. Agnes is giving us the run-around about interviewing Bobby Henley outside of their _protection_ ,” he spat the word, his fingers curling against the palms of his hands.

Foggy was suddenly reminded of the sound of those fists hitting the leather of the heavy bags. The feel of the bag swinging against him, pushing him back. Matt took another step forward. Foggy refused to back up any further. He’d seen the tremble run through Matt’s frame.

“And I know that the Messala family is back in the game,” Matt finished.

“What’s going on with you, Matt?” Foggy asked, finding a give in his voice, in his stance, in the way his spine bowed instinctively in a bid to show Matt he wasn’t challenging him anymore.

Matt flinched at that; a wordless reply swept his features, swift, violent, and painful to see. He exhaled slowly, his own tense stance bowing, his fists relaxing. Foggy tried to slow his heart rate a bit, knowing Matt had been hearing it all this time, but the inverted fold of Matt’s lips had his worry spiking.

“I’m not bailing on you, Foggy,” Matt said softly. “It’s just…this case….”

“Why didn’t you tell me about St. Agnes?”

At that, Matt turned, moving around the opposite side of his desk and busying his hands cleaning up his files and shutting down his laptop. Foggy waited him out. He’d gotten pretty good at waiting in the last few months.

“It…uh. It honestly never occurred to me.”

“Just slipped your mind, huh?” Foggy asked, making sure his disbelief was heavy in the words.

Matt’s swallow was audible. “It was just…it was enough that you knew how I grew up. Didn’t think you needed to know where.”

“I know they kept you away from the other kids,” Foggy informed him, keeping his voice level. “I know about the mentor.”

Matt’s head snapped up so fast Foggy swore he heard something crack in his neck.

“What did you just say?”

“That was that Stick guy, wasn’t it? The guy from _Kung-Fu_?”

Foggy knew he was mixing up things Matt had told him the day after he’d found him nearly dead and the random pop-culture references he’d made to remember the absurdity of what his friend was saying, but he didn’t care. The way Matt’s face lost what color it had, the way his hands gripped the back of his office chair, told Foggy all he needed to know.

“How did you know about…?”

Hoping he wasn’t totally selling Karen out, he said, “We dug a bit deeper, Karen and me. When they wouldn’t agree to a meet with Bobby here at the office.” So it was stretching the truth a smidge. He figured Matt was too rattled by what he’d just said to notice any uptick in his heartbeat. “Talked to a Sister Angelica. She told us how you were alone. All that time. How the mentor they found for you was a…violent man.”

Matt flinched once more. Foggy was starting to hate that reflexive motion.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Matt asked, the low, dangerous voice back once more.

“You haven’t exactly been engaged lately.”

“That’s not the reason,” Matt shook his head.

Foggy crossed his arms, leaning against the wall. “Okay, fine. Karen wanted to tell you. She was worried about you. I said not to.”

“To get back at me,” Matt guessed.

“What? No!” Foggy surged forward, surprise making his voice crack. “Why would you even think that?”

“Because I kept secrets from you.”

“What are we, twelve? That’s not how this works, Matty,” Foggy shook his head. “Not with family.”

Matt frowned, moving around the edge of his desk toward his office door. “Then why?”

“Because I saw your face when we were at that place,” Foggy told him. “And I didn’t want to mess you up more.”

Matt stopped just inside the doorway; Foggy wanted to reach out and grab his arm.

“You’re right.”

Foggy drew his head back, confused. Matt shifted so that his face was angled just over his shoulder, voice directed back toward Foggy.

“About the reason things aren’t adding up in the case,” Matt continued. “It’s something to do with the Henleys and the Messalas.”

He headed toward the front door.

“Wait,” Foggy called after him, watching as he grabbed his coat but didn’t bother putting it on. “Where are you going?”

“To find out what the connection is.”

Words started to slam together in Foggy’s head, adding up quickly to a solution that left him cold. Words like _drugs_ and _power vacuum_ and _careful_.

“Matt, wait.”

Matt paused once more. Foggy hurried forward.

“You don’t have to do this. Not like this.”

“Yeah, I do.”

The weight of those words pressed heavy on Foggy’s heart.

“No, listen,” Foggy did reach out this time, grasping Matt’s shoulder, but not turning him around. “I know you hear the city, Matt. I know you hear all the…the cries for help. But you don’t have save them all.”

“Somebody should.” Matt turned slightly, the scruff along his jaw shadowing his expression.

“So, let the…the guys like Stark and Captain fuckin’ America do it. Guys who can get shoved through sky scrapers and walk away.”

“They’re not around unless aliens are falling from the sky.” Matt’s smile stretched and scraped across his shadowed face and Foggy tightened his grip. “Besides, you’re right. This case is important. This is how I’m pitching in.”

“By finding out how the Messala crime family connects to our _Memento_ -fied janitor?” Incredulity creased Foggy’s tone.

“In a manner of speaking.” He graced Foggy with a genuine smile. “Don’t worry. I hurt anyone too bad, I’ll head to confession.”

It was said like a prayer before sleeping: asking forgiveness and only half sorry.

“Yeah? And what if they hurt you?”

Matt shrugged, effectively sliding out of Foggy’s grip. “Then confession won’t matter.”

Foggy let him go, standing for several minutes alone in their quiet office. How had he lost control of the situation so quickly? He’d called Matt _family_ without even thinking about it; Foggy’s family would never have let him walk away visibly shaken and slightly suicidal.

So often since meeting Matt Murdock, Foggy Nelson found himself feeling shell-shocked from their conversations. He thought about calling Karen, giving her the latest update for their unified _Worried About Matt_ support group, but then decided against it. He’d just wake her up at this point and unless she was calling out for help, she wouldn’t be able to hold onto Matt any better than he had.

Tonight, Matt would be out there, somehow navigating the city despite the snow, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. There never was.

Scowling, Foggy grabbed his own coat and locked the door behind him. He needed food, liquor, and sleep. Not necessarily in that order. He wasn’t going to worry about this damn case or blind Matt Murdock for another minute.

By nine the next morning, however, he was plenty fucking worried.

“Foggy,” Karen called from her desk, startling him out of listening to Matt’s voicemail for the fifth time that morning. “Sister Elisa is here.”

“Who?” Foggy glanced up, bringing his focus into the present. He looked up through the blinds and caught Karen’s stern expression, then darted his gaze toward their front door where he saw the light-blue head covering of the middle-aged nun he’d spoken with earlier in the week. “Oh, yes, of course!”

Moving into the main room he reached out a hand to the Sister, noting the non-descript, fortyish man standing behind her, staring curiously around the office as though he’d never seen anything like it before.

“This is an unexpected surprise,” Foggy greeted. “What can we do for you?”

“Well, you’d been trying to coordinate an interview with Bobby,” Sister Elisa explained. “I was only just able to get away, you see.”

Foggy exchanged a look with Karen who turned up her hands against the desk in a subtle shrug.

“I see. Of course. Right,” Foggy nodded. “Unfortunately, my partner has been…called away. But our…paralegal, Karen Page, can sit in on the deposition.”

Karen picked up her cue smoothly. “Absolutely. It’s nice to see you again, Bobby,” she called, catching the man’s attention.

“It’s nice to see you, too,” Bobby replied.

Sister Elisa looked slightly surprised. “Bobby, you remember meeting this young woman?”

Bobby Henley shrugged, tilting his head in what seemed to be a mild tick. “No. But it sounded like she liked meeting me, so I just agreed.”

Karen and Sister Elisa smiled indulgently. Foggy frowned. He’d give his left arm to have Matt with them right now. For more reasons than one.

“How about we sit in my office?” Foggy invited.

His mind was buzzing with the implications of seemingly unconnected facts. Why agree to the interview now, after four days of trying, and with no prior notice? Why show up like this, unannounced?

They sat at the desk and Karen immediately took out her notebook. Foggy began by establishing some basics—name, age, place of residence—for the mic recorder to make sure it picked up Bobby’s voice. Then he wasted no time diving in to ask Bobby about the night his parents were murdered. The clarity with which Bobby was able to recall the details of that night surprised him.

Especially considering he couldn’t remember yesterday.

“The blood was…sticky,” Bobby said, inexplicably looking toward Karen. “On my hands. Like syrup.  I always thought blood would feel more like…like….”

“Water,” Karen supplied.

Bobby smiled slightly, nodding. “Yeah. Just…wet. But it made this sound when I touched them. Like a zipper. And it was…it was everywhere.”

Karen’s eyes were filled with tears, Foggy noticed, and she was staring at Bobby Henley’s hands with something akin to repulsion. He knew this had to be bringing her back to that moment she woke up with her colleague dead in her apartment and opened his mouth to redirect the conversation when Karen shocked the hell out of him.

“You didn’t know where to put your hands,” she said, lifting her red-rimmed eyes to Bobby’s. “Did you?”

Bobby shook his head, his chin quivering slightly. “They didn’t even look like people anymore,” he said. “And I didn’t want to make more of a mess. My mom liked to keep the place clean.”

“When the police arrived,” Karen continued, never taking her eyes from Bobby’s face, “where you scared?”

Bobby shook his head slowly. “I kind of…expected them.”

Karen nodded. “And did you expect them to think you’d killed your parents?”

Bobby shook his head again.

“When did things start to get…confused for you?”

Bobby frowned, looking from Karen to Sister Elisa and back.

Karen tipped her head forward a bit, her whole posture emanating empathy. “Bobby…when did you start to blank out on everything that had happened to you?” When Bobby remained silent, Karen pressed on softly, “Was it when the police came? When you were in jail?”

“At the hospital, I think,” Bobby said slowly. “They took me to the hospital first. Started asking me questions.”

“But you remember everything now,” Foggy broke in. Bobby shot him a look that bordered on irritation, but then nodded, almost reluctantly. “That must have been pretty frightening. Remembering it all at once like that.”

“Still have trouble, sometimes,” Bobby said.

Foggy heard his conscience shouting _unreliable witness_ , but ignored it.

“When do you have trouble?” Karen asked, her voice soft with curiosity, eyes sympathetic. Bobby looked at her. “Is it when the police question you?”

Foggy watched as Bobby drew his chin up, almost as though he’d been handed something revolting. “Yes. I don’t mind talking with you about it. Just not them.”

Karen smiled gently and nodded. While Bobby was looking at Karen, Foggy decided to take a chance.

“Bobby, do you remember Sophia Messala?” he asked, recalling their ‘murder board’ and the rather vague details in the cold case files.

He wished like mad that Matt had been sitting next to him when he saw the ripple that coursed across Bobby Henley’s expression two beats before he turned back to Foggy and asked, “Who?”

“She’d be about your age now,” Foggy said. “It seems that her parents and your parents were pretty good friends around the time your parents were killed. According to the police records, you two spent a lot of time together as kids.”

Bobby stared at him, face almost carefully blank.

“Do you know that name, Bobby?” Karen pressed.

Bobby shook his head, his fingers rubbing in quick, anxious strokes on the arm of his chair. “I wanna go home now.”

Foggy exchanged a look with Karen. “Bobby? It’s really important you tell us the truth.”

Bobby looked over at Sister Elisa. “I wanna go home now.”

“I think that’s enough for today,” Sister Elisa said, standing.

“Sister,” Foggy held up a hand to stop her. “Bobby’s preliminary hearing is in a week. Right now, we have nothing that definitively proves Bobby did _not_ kill his parents.”

“What are you talking about? Look at him!” Sister Elisa exclaimed. “He could barely hurt a fly now, let alone when he was a child.”

“We can’t enter the insanity defense a second time. Not when he’s been able to remember the event,” Foggy continued. “We need more information.”

“Then I suggest you get it,” Sister Elisa declared, her lips flattening into a thin line of disapproval. “I’m taking him home now.”

Foggy sighed, relenting. He watched as Bobby’s gaze lingered on Karen before allowing himself to be led to the door. When both had left, Foggy looked over at Karen.

“He knows something.”

“You bet your ass he knows something,” Karen agreed, her entire demeanor—right down to her tone of voice—shifting from soft and sympathetic to shrewd and calculating. He supposed it shouldn’t have shocked him quite so much to realize that she had been playing Bobby Henley the whole time. “Think he’s protecting someone?”

“Maybe.” Foggy chewed on his bottom lip. “It was like talking to a child.”

“Where the hell is Matt? He should have been here for that!”

“Hey, I’m standing in the choir here,” Foggy waved a hand in her direction, then picked up his phone. “He’s not answering.”

“Maybe you should go check on him,” Karen suggested. “See if he got in another _car accident_.”

Foggy looked at her sharply. Karen lifted an eyebrow and sat back in her chair. For a long moment they simply stared at each other.

“What are you thinking?” Foggy finally asked.

“That Matt’s into something dangerous. Something that gets him hurt.”

Foggy pressed his lips out in an effort to keep from revealing just how close to the truth she was.

“I think he does it on purpose to…to, I don’t know, _feel_ something.” Karen sat forward, resting her elbows on Foggy’s desk, shoving her fingers into her long, blond hair. “Like whatever happened to him at St. Agnes…it shut off something inside and the only way he can reach that part of him is to…hurt.”

There was something so raw and dark in how she spoke that Foggy found himself wondering how much was conjecture and how much was memory. It struck him, then, that there was a great deal he didn’t know about Karen Page.

“Hey, you okay?”

Karen sat back and offered him a starved chuckle. “Right now, I think I’m the last one you should be worried about.”

“Right now, you’re the one in front of me,” Foggy countered.

Karen studied him for a long moment, her blue eyes steady, revealing nothing. Then she sighed, and looked out toward the main door. Foggy was sure she was about to tell him something real, something honest about herself, when the phone rang.

They both jumped and Foggy reached for it, fumbling the receiver until he had it by his ear. “Nelson & Murdock.”

Sergeant Brett Mahoney was on the other line, saying that retired officer Frank Tosky had been found dead of an apparent heart attack at his home earlier that morning.

“ _Figured you should know. I know he was part of your Henley case._ ”

“Yeah, he was like the only piece of the case that was actually making sense,” Foggy sighed. “You sure there’s no sign of foul play?”

_“Autopsy’s pending, but doesn’t look like it.”_

“Huh. Okay.”

_“You sound almost disappointed.”_

“Of course not,” Foggy huffed, trying to cover up the fact that Brett was a little too on the money. “Thanks for letting us know.” He hung up and looked over at Karen. “Well, that’s Tosky done. And he was pretty much the only witness the prosecution could go to for naming Bobby as the killer. Might be able to keep this from ever going to trial after all.”

“Unless they are able to get something out of Sophia Messala,” Karen pointed out.

“We even know where she is?”

Karen gave him a side-eyed look. “Are you serious right now?”

Foggy’s eyebrows danced up to his hairline in a helpless shrug. Karen sighed and grabbed his laptop, spinning it around to face her. Her fingers tapped rapidly for a moment, then she turned it back to him. Foggy’s eyes opened wide at the _Entertainment Weekly_ article on the model known simply by the solo moniker: Sophie.

“Whoa, _that’s_ Sophia Messala?”

“Hell’s Kitchen’s very own Kate Moss,” Karen smirked. “She’s signing autographs down at the Macy’s on 35th later this evening.”

“Feel like going shopping?” Foggy grinned.

“I could always use a new pair of shoes,” Karen tilted her head, as though contemplating the matter.

“Okay, new plan.” Foggy clapped his hands together.

“There was an old plan?” Karen asked, lips pushed forward in a mock pout.

“Yes, and it involved Matt, so that’s shot to shit,” Foggy said, standing up and reaching for his jacket. “Get those notes from Bobby Henley into the file so Matt can read them later, then go buy yourself something pretty…and while you’re there, see if you can get Sophia Messala to agree to talk with us.”

“And you?”

Foggy took a breath. “I’m going to find Matt.”


	6. Karen

**

**Karen**

The new plan, as it turned out, was worse than the old one.

Karen sat on the narrow ER bed, one hand clutching the thin mattress, the other cradled in her lap, wrapped in a towel. Her legs hung over the edge, toes barely touching the linoleum floor. Blood crusted her hair, turning the yellow of it into rust-colored clumps just above her left ear, and painted her palm where she’d instinctively grabbed the knife.

She could smell it. Like dirty metal, a tinge of copper in the air around her.

Now that everything was over and she was safely ensconced into an alcove of the ER, Karen felt the adrenaline that had propelled her from the subway station just outside of Macy’s all the way to safety siphon away from her, leaving her feeling hollow and shaky. A policeman stood just outside her curtain, waiting until she was treated before taking her statement.

She heard Foggy before she saw him.

“I’m okay,” she said as he approached, eyes wide, face pale, hair flying. She was slightly dismayed to hear the tremble in her voice. “Foggy, I’m okay.”

He stood next to her bed, hands hovering as though he weren’t sure where to touch her. “You’ve got blood everywhere!”

“Just got two cuts,” she said with a small smile. “Head wounds bleed a lot.”

“What _happened_?” Foggy exhaled, sinking down to sit next to her on the bed. “I had _just talked_ to you!”

“I have to give my statement to that cop,” Karen nodded toward the man who was now watching them. “But they wanted to wait until I’d gotten stitched up.”

“Yeah, sure, of course,” Foggy nodded rigorously, trying to calm his breathing as he ran a hand through his hair. “I tried Matt—again—but got voicemail. Again.”

“Hi, Karen,” a new voice, friendly, warm and immediately comforting, drew close as the curtain separating Karen from the rest of the ER patients was pulled back. “I’m here to fix you up.”

“Claire!”

The woman looked over at Foggy, clearly startled. “Foggy?”

Karen blinked. “You two know each other?”

“Yeah, she—“

“I’m a friend of Matt’s,” Claire interrupted. “From the neighborhood.”

Karen nodded. “Well, any friend of Matt’s,” she said with a smile.

Foggy jumped off the bed as Claire stepped closer, her pretty, dark face drawing up in a sympathetic wince as she tilted Karen’s chin to get a better look at the cut on her scalp.

“Any idea what they hit you with?”

“Nothing,” Karen said. “They shoved me against a pillar.”

Claire nodded and lifted her hand. “And this?”

“They had a knife.”

“You grab it from them?”

“I tried.”

Karen listened and responded as Claire ask about her last tetanus shot, tested her for concussion, then the range of motion for her fingers, and finally looked away as Claire administered shots of lidocaine in both areas before starting to clean away the blood. Behind Claire, Karen could see two teenagers strapped down to beds, both shaking and crying, one with blood running from his mouth as a nurse tried to keep his head turned to the side.

“Whoa,” she exclaimed, unable to stop herself. “What’s going on there?”

Claire cast a look over her shoulder, then pulled the curtain closed. “Latest drug du jour,” she muttered, angrily. “Some kind of street hallucinogen they’re calling Dust. Kids suck it up like a pixie stick and it triggers intense hallucinations, seizures, you name it.”

“You said it’s called Dust?” Foggy asked, sounding oddly breathless.

“Liquid form is twice as potent, but so far we’ve only seen the powder hit the street kids,” Claire sighed, shifting to cleaning off Karen’s hand and laying the sterile covering around the wound. “Tell you what, if I could get my hands on the maniacs who are selling the stuff, I’d shove a bunch of it in their system and lock ‘em in a small room.”

She glanced at the officer standing off to the side. “You didn’t hear that.”

“Hear what?” the officer replied, a _that’s not all I’d do to them_ look on his face.

 “What’s the…y’know...treatment?” Foggy asked.

“Not much except to flush the drug from their systems,” Claire replied. “We keep their blood pressure down; try to keep them from having heart attacks or hurting themselves. That’s the worst of it. Some of the ones we’ve seen in here have caused serious damage to themselves because they were trapped in some kind of…nightmare.”

Karen watched as Claire readied the suture materials, tilting her head curiously when Claire looked back over at Foggy and said, “Someone found these two and brought them in before they were too far gone.”

Foggy closed his eyes briefly and nodded. Karen stared at him, confused, but didn’t get a chance to ask about that exchange as Claire once more turned her attention back to the cut on Karen’s scalp.

“This is going to take a little bit,” Claire told her. “Do you want to give your statement now?”

Karen met the woman’s brown eyes and smiled gratefully. “Yeah, that’d be a great distraction. Thanks.”

“It’s what I’d want to do,” Claire shrugged. “Foggy, you good to stay for this?”

“Not like it’s the first time I’ve seen you stitch someone up,” Foggy muttered.

Both women shot him a look; though Karen registered Claire’s was less surprise and more irritation. Nodding to the officer, Karen waited until Claire finished cleaning the blood from her hair and the side of her face, exceedingly grateful for the numbing agent, before beginning.

“I went to the signing at Macy’s like we discussed,” she said, looking at Foggy, “and I was able to get the security guy to let me speak to Sophia for five minutes when I told her I was from a law firm. Guess the Messala’s are used to lawyers asking questions.”

Both the officer and Claire huffed in unison at that comment.

“Go on,” Foggy encouraged.

“I did speak with her,” Karen replied. “Not much to help our case,” she dropped her gaze, then looked back up at Foggy hoping he’d get the hint and save that detail for later. “I was leaving when I heard someone call my name.”

“They knew your name?” Foggy asked.

“So this wasn’t a random mugging?” the officer inquired.

Karen shook her head.

“Easy, hold still,” Claire cautioned. “You’re gonna want these stitches straight.”

“Right, sorry,” Karen murmured. “I turned around and there were three men. They looked like every other Italian thug I’d ever seen.”

“You’ve seen a lot of Italian thugs?” the officer commented.

Karen frowned. “Are you from Hell’s Kitchen?”

She noticed Foggy and Claire giving the officer similar looks. He waved her onward.

“Anyway, dark hair, black sunglasses, dressed in black clothes. Only thing distinguishable was that the one with the knife had a tattoo on his hand—like the tail of a scorpion. Once I saw the knife,” she let out a shaky breath, “I didn’t look away from it.”

“Did they say anything to you?”

“Said they had a message for me,” Karen told him. “The one with the knife put it under my chin and said that I should tell my lawyer friends to stop digging. Henley was going to get off.” She watched as Foggy turned away as if hiding his expression from Karen. “He kinda pressed me against the wall of the subway. People were moving around behind them—didn’t even see what was going on—and I…I don’t know. I panicked, I guess. I grabbed his hand and pushed it away, but the knife cut my hand and I shouted. He…well, honestly, he looked pissed.” Karen shrugged. “He grabbed my hair and slammed my head against the pillar and they left.”

“So, three guys in black, wearing black glasses, one with a scorpion tail tattoo on his right hand,” the officer repeated. “That it?”

“Yes,” Karen replied, feeling tears suddenly burn the backs of her eyes.

“Think you could sit with a sketch artist if we asked you to?”

“Yes,” Karen said again.

“I’m assuming your friend can get you home?” the officer asked. Off of Karen’s nod, he continued, “I’m going to file this, okay? You’ll be hearing from us.”

“Thank you,” Karen replied, sighing, glad it was over.

When the officer walked away, Foggy turned around once more and she realized she was wrong, it had just started.

“I should’ve been there.”

“Foggy, it happened so fast, I—“

“I sent you there, _alone_. It should have been me.”

She shook her head, trying to reassure him. “I’m fi—“

“Karen!”

Three heads raised toward the sound of Matt’s voice.

He was standing in the center of the ER, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, the hemline torn, and a leather jacket that had seen better days. Karen was surprised to see his hands empty; how had he been able to reach the ER without his cane? And who had let a blind man navigate the ER alone?

“She’s right here, Matt,” Claire called to him.

It registered with Karen then that Matt looked unsteady on his feet, his hands trembling at his sides, and there was blood on the side of his face, collecting in his eyebrow.

“She okay?” Matt asked, his voice shaking slightly, turning toward them.

“Why don’t you come over here and find out for yourself.”

Matt approached cautiously and as Karen watched, Claire stepped away from the bed and drew closer to him. She didn’t touch him, but Matt definitely knew she was there. He gravitated toward her as though magnetized, stopping an arm’s length away and holding himself so stiffly it looked like a harsh word would shatter him.

“You okay?” Claire asked him in a low voice.

“Fine,” Matt replied tersely, though the closer he came the more Karen could see that he was very far from ‘fine’. “Got Foggy’s message.”

“I’m here, Matt,” Foggy told him and Matt flinched, darting his head toward where Foggy stood. That was curious, Karen thought; typically Matt seemed to just _know_ Foggy was in the room. He was definitely rattled. “Question is, where the hell have _you_ been?”

Matt moved to the edge of the bed and Karen reached out a hand to him, letting him grab her wrist, the touch of her skin seeming to settle him. The blood streaking down from a cut on his forehead was old, she could now see. Dried. The bruise forming there looking as though it would cause him a headache to rival the one she was feeling right now.

“How bad?” he asked her, ignoring Foggy’s question. His chin lifted and he seemed to be…breathing her in, somehow. As though assessing the damage for himself.

“Just a few cuts,” Karen said. “I’m okay, really. Claire’s fixing me right up.”

“This is because of the case?” Matt asked.

A sharp cry of fear or pain from one of the Dust victims skimmed across the tension in their curtained alcove like a stone across a deceptively smooth pond.

“Yes.” Foggy practically snarled, his upper thigh bouncing against the bed as he stepped closer.

Karen saw Matt draw up and away, releasing her wrist as he did so. There was something immediately dangerous about his stance; he clearly didn’t like to feel cornered, but Foggy was apparently past caring.

“I’ve been calling you, Matt. All day. _Both phones._ ”

“I know, Foggy, I just—“

“You _know_?” Foggy stepped closer and Claire reached out a hand to draw him back.

Just then the Dust patients began screaming, a high-pitched wail, and Karen saw three nurses hurry past the opening in her curtain toward the sound. Matt shuddered, crossing his arms over his chest in a protective motion. As though he were trying to catch bits of himself before they fell and shattered completely.

Claire used the opportunity to push Foggy aside. “Matt, how about you let me look at that cut?”

“It’s fine,” Matt practically growled at her. He shifted his stance to face Foggy and Karen wished she could see him without his glasses. Even though she knew his eyes wouldn’t be focused, wouldn’t give away his emotions, the glasses felt like a mask between the Matt she knew and the man standing before her. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to answer, Foggy.”

“You were busy, that it? Too busy to let me know you’re still alive? Too busy to keep Karen from getting attacked?”

“That’s not fair,” Matt snapped.

“Isn’t it?” Foggy’s voice pitched lower as he stepped close enough to Matt their foreheads were practically touching. “Maybe she just didn’t yell loud enough.”

“ _Foggy_.” It was Claire who snapped. Not Karen.

Karen watched Matt’s face drain of color at Foggy’s words and his hands—the right one slightly scuffed, knuckles swollen—curled into fists. Claire grabbed Foggy’s arm and pulled him around with surprising strength.

When he was facing her, his eyes on hers, she practically snarled at him. “That is _enough_.”

Karen saw Matt leaving before anyone else, but with her hand trussed up in the sterile guard and a suture kit, couldn’t get off the bed to chase after him.

“Matt! Wait!”

Foggy turned but Matt was already through the pneumatic doors.

“What the hell?” Claire demanded, shoving at Foggy slightly.

Foggy darted a guilty look at Karen, then his face crumpled a bit and he shoved a hand through his hair, bowing his head. “Jesus, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve….”

“It’s him, isn’t it?” Karen heard herself saying, her voice hollow, heart trembling with a sudden surge of truth. Listening to them, seeing Matt beat up once more, she realized that on some level…she’d always known.

“Daredevil,” she whispered, drawing their eyes. “Somehow…it’s _him_.”

Foggy paled and Claire covered her mouth, turning away. Neither of them spoke. So Karen decided to fill in the gap of silence.

“I was thinking some kind of…of Fight Club, to be honest,” she kept her voice pitched low, hating the tremble she could still hear. “No way someone’s that clumsy. The man is constantly bruised. And he’s got a hero complex bigger than all of us combined. Doesn’t know how _not_ to help.”

Claire tipped her head at that, still silent, and turned her attention back to the sutures on Karen’s hand.

“I just can’t figure out how…I mean, he’s really blind, right?”

“Yeah,” Foggy choked out. “In a manner of speaking.” He chuckled thinly at that, but continued, “It happened when he was a kid. Says he sees a world on fire. The…uh, the chemicals that blinded him…they kinda super-charged his other senses.”

“So, what? He’s like…hyper-vigilant?”

“He can hear a heartbeat across the room,” Foggy continued. “Cotton feels like sandpaper on his skin. He can smell if you showered in the last three days and taste every ingredient in a scoop of ice cream.”

“Oh my God,” Karen whispered, thinking of the bruises, the blood. “How does he not…I mean, with all the bruises? How does he bear it?”

“I ask myself that same question every time I see him,” Claire replied.

“So who all…I mean, how does he—“ she caught her breath, suddenly remembering that night in the office, the way he’d held her, his tears hot on her neck.

_I can’t take one more step alone_.

“Claire and I both found out by accident,” Foggy said. “He would have kept us out of it forever if he could.”

“He’s not going to be happy that you know.” Claire finished her stitches and began to wrap her hand.

“Maybe he should have thought up some better excuses for his black eyes, then,” Karen scoffed, sitting up straighter. “I mean, boxing at least.”

Foggy chuffed. “He’s a bad liar. Good Catholic boy and all.”

“Okay, keep these stitches dry for at least 24 hours. I used dissolvable ones and glue on the outside, so you can shower tomorrow,” Claire told her. “You can take ibuprofen for the pain. If you need something stronger, see your Primary Care doc. I’m going to sign you out, but, uh…,” she glanced at Foggy. “Something tells me I’ll be seeing you soon.”

“Thanks, Claire,” Karen said, sliding off the bed and standing in front of Foggy. “Come on. We’ve got a superhero to save.”

Convincing Foggy that she didn’t need to go directly home and to bed was a small feat. She hadn’t wanted to, but he forced her to fight dirty as they rode the subway from the ER back toward Matt’s apartment.

“Foggy, he was already on edge and then you pushed him over by insinuating he didn’t save me,” Karen pointed out. “We’re in this together.”

“You can be _in this_ from the safety of your home and bed with a phone,” Foggy argued, though the guilt in his expression was painful for her to see. “You just got jumped, Karen! By men with weapons!”

“No, I just got used to send a message,” Karen retorted, her voice low, eyes hot as she stared at Foggy. “Besides, this is hardly the first time I’ve dealt with men holding weapons on me.”

“What?” Foggy looked at her strangely. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Karen looked away, her mind’s eyes focused not on Foggy, but on Wesley’s arrogant expression slipping to disbelief as blossoms of red spread across the white of his shirt, the gun almost weightless in her grip. “The point is, I’m coming with you. We’re finding him together.”

“Son of a bitch,” Foggy groaned as the stepped off the subway. “I really fucked this up.”

“You were just worried about your friend,” Karen countered, thinking of the way he hadn’t quite known where to touch her.

“Yeah, but I’m worried about him _all the time_ ,” Foggy replied.

_Okay, yeah._ Karen blinked.  _Of course he’s worried about Matt._

“He lives like he doesn’t care how badly they hurt him as long as he takes a few of them out with him and I want him to…,” he took a breath, hanging his head a bit as if realizing the significance of what he was about to say, “to live like he’s made of glass.”

“Maybe you should tell him that.”

They stepped out of the subway tunnel into the brisk winter air of the New York night. Karen could smell snow, though the storm had held off thus far. The street lights illuminated their dark walk from the station to Matt’s apartment building and she pressed close to Foggy out of need for warmth and lingering fear of solitude, even that of a few inches.

“I have, Karen. So many times. But he’s…. There’s something driving him. Like it’s…burning him up or something.” Karen started at that, suddenly remembering Sister Angelica’s words from earlier in the week. “It’s not that he _can’t_ stop. It’s that he doesn’t _want_ to.”

“Then we have to help him, Foggy,” Karen declared as they started up the stairs. “If he won’t stop, we have to help him survive.”

“I’ve been trying,” Foggy said softly. “But I don’t…I don’t handle fear all that well.”

“Not many people do,” Karen sighed, stepping back as Foggy pounded on Matt’s door.

When no one answered, they exchanged a look and headed to the roof access. The apartment was dark and quiet. She breathed deep, trying to imagine what Matt smelled when he entered a room, how it helped him determine who was there, what had happened, if there was danger or if he was in the clear. She could detect only wood from his recently repaired bottom step and the lingering scent that was Matt: earthy…and slightly intoxicating, if she were honest with herself.

“He’s not here,” Foggy muttered.

“I worked that part out on my own, thanks,” Karen replied. “Where do we look?”

“I’ve been everywhere,” Foggy sighed, kicking the side of Matt’s couch lightly. “Everywhere Matt usually goes, everywhere we’ve gone together….”

“Okay, well, what about Daredevil?” Karen asked, looking out toward the glaring neon billboard that illuminated Matt’s living room. It had finally started snowing, giving the billboard light an ethereal effect. “Where would _he_ go?”

“The hell am I supposed to know that?” Foggy asked. “Rooftops? Bad guy lairs? The heart of darkness?”

He was flailing his arms at his sides, but then abruptly turned and headed toward a large cabinet gracing one of the brick walls. As Karen watched, he dug out a key from the folds of a firehose fixed to the wall next to the cabinet, opened the large doors, then drew out an old steamer trunk, lifting the lid and setting aside a wooden insert.

“It’s still here,” he breathed, sounding puzzled.

“What is?”

“The Daredevil suit,” Foggy explained. “I don’t get it—he’s been out dealing with all of this…as just _himself_?”

Karen knelt next to him, carefully drawing out the suit and running her fingers along the material. She felt a tacky substance along one of the arms and down the torso.

“Not the whole time,” she said, showing Foggy the blood she found. “Maybe just today?”

Foggy sank back on his heels. “To figure out where he would have gone, we gotta figure out where he’s been,” he said, drawing out his phone and simply holding it for a moment. “He tried to tell me yesterday, but I was too busy being pissed off at him for not doing this all lawyer-like. I wasn’t listening. _Dammit_.”

“What do you mean?” Karen asked, gingerly rubbing at the stitches in her scalp.

“He said that he thought the Messala family was part of getting that Dust drug into Hell’s Kitchen from some point along the Hudson. And that we needed to stop looking into who killed the Henleys and focus on _why_ they were killed.”

“Foggy,” Karen put her hand on his shoulder. “Sophia Messala was _terrified_ when I told her we were representing Bobby Henley.”

“Wait, what?”

“I didn’t get a chance to tell you back at the hospital,” Karen apologized, “but yeah, she heard his name and went pale. Her bodyguard even stepped forward. She said that they’d never been friends when they were young; he’d bullied and tormented her. I guess he was a real asshole at twelve.”

“Kinda runs against Sister Elisa’s _wouldn’t hurt a soul_ defense,” Foggy frowned.

“She didn’t cop to anything her father’s family was involved in,” Karen continued. “It’s one reason she decided to go by just ‘Sophie’ when she started modeling—leave the name behind. But she’s definitely a Messala, complete with the Italian goon entourage.”

“Same kind of goons who attacked you?”

Karen frowned, biting her bottom lip in thought, then shrugging helplessly. “When I told her that it looked like we had a slam-dunk case and we were just trying to cover any bases the prosecution might put in play, she looked like she was going to be sick.”

“She give you anything specific on Bobby?” Foggy frowned.

“No, just…a general overall impression. And a flat-out denial of knowing anything about the Messala family’s involvement with Bobby’s parents.”

Foggy dialed a number and pressed speaker. Karen waited patiently, a little surprised when Brett Mahoney answered. She listened as Foggy revealed a bit of their case to Brett, setting it up like they thought they might be onto something a bit more than just closing a twenty-year old cold case and asked if he’d heard anything about the Messalas being connected to that new drug that’s wiping out all the street kids.

_“You psychic or somethin’, Nelson?”_ Brett muttered. _“You meet up with your friend with the horns recently?”_

Foggy exchanged a look with Karen. “Not in the last few days, no.”

_“Dude brought in three of the Messala family and a packet of Dust last night—liquid Dust, too, not that cheap street stuff. Heard he managed to get four people to the hospital afterwards, too.”_

“He’s…been busy,” Foggy commented, a softness to his voice that caught Karen’s attention.

_“Yeah, no shit Sherlock. I also got two would-be arsonists and a street purse snatcher in my holding cell, all tagged for me to process. I’m getting a rep as this dude’s personal paper-pusher.”_

“He trusts you, Mahoney. Don’t take that lightly.”

_“What’s that supposed to mean?”_

“Nothing,” Foggy sighed. “Listen, I think we might be onto something with this Henley-Messala connection. Anything you can give me?”

_“Just this, tox screen came back on Tosky.”_

“And?”

_“Looks like there were high levels of_ _anthracyclines in his system. Whatever the hell that is.”_

“That cause the heart attack?”

_“I look like a doctor to you? But M.E.’s saying yeah, maybe.”_

“So Tosky was murdered, there was a connection between the Messalas and the Henleys twenty years back, and the Messalas are suddenly alive and kicking out drugs on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen,” Foggy counted off three fingers. “That about sum up the shit storm we’re sitting in?”

_“Think you need to talk to your buddy the devil,”_ Brett stated before hanging up.

“We gotta find him, Foggy,” Karen said softly, suddenly feeling the fingers of panic at her throat. “He looked rough when he left the ER and if he doesn’t have the suit….”

“What the hell is he doing?” Foggy muttered, pushing to his feet and moving over to the window. “He’s just…just a _guy_ , y’know? Why does he think this lands on him, all this…this pain? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Karen compulsively bit at her bottom lip, watching Foggy as he paced a tight circle.

“Y’know…a week ago?” Foggy continued. “He was fine. I mean, not, y’know _fine_. But he was the Matt version.”

“A week ago, you went to St. Agnes,” Karen pointed out.

Foggy nodded. “We’re going back.”

The night seemed to collect against the corners of the buildings and just past alley entrances like cobwebs. Karen tried not to outwardly shudder, irrational fears not so unheard of after being attacked in public with lights glaring down—no one stopping, no one even looking twice at her—slid into her subconscious like smoke.

_People say when you call for help in Hell’s Kitchen…someone hears you_.

Foggy was right: she should have shouted louder. He would have heard her. She knows he would have heard her.

The night he fought off the man from Union Allied, the fire escape and scaffolding outside her apartment both weapons and instruments of torture, she’d been staggered by his endurance, his brutality, his bravery. She could still recall at will the image of him pushing himself up from the ground, rain soaking his black vigilante clothes, blood pouring from his mouth.

And that had been _Matt_. The same man who offered her a shy smile when she brought him coffee in the morning. Who stood in front of a jury and pleaded the case of the innocent. Who wrapped his arms around her, needing simply to know he wasn’t alone.

By the time they’d reached St. Agnes, Karen was out for blood. This place may have offered him food and shelter, but it had also cut him off from love and support. From companionship. It had taken a frightened boy suddenly alone in the world and pushed him into a life of solitude. A life he’d somehow found a way to navigate until he’d found them.

And with their confusion and frustration, they’d essentially cut him off as well, proving the sum of his life experiences true: people leave.

“Something’s wrong,” Foggy muttered as they approached the same front door Karen had entered before.

Karen immediately agreed; the door was open. They pushed it further inward and headed cautiously inside the darkened lobby entrance. Foggy called out a quiet _hello_.

“The children. Get the children. Hide them. Hide.”

Karen looked around at the sound of the frantic, disjointed words. The voice sounded familiar.

“Sister Angelica?”

“Hide them. Keep them away.”

Following the sound of the manic-sounding words, Karen led Foggy down a hall to a section of small, round-topped doors, all closed except one. Sitting huddled in the far corner of what appeared to be a sparsely decorated bedroom was Sister Angelica, her cornette askew, strands of gray hair spiraling free. Karen hurried forward, grasping the thin, wrinkled hand that tugged at the edge of her wimple, nails scratching red lines down the side of her face.

“What the hell?” Foggy muttered.            

“Sister Angelica, stop,” Karen implored. “You’re hurting yourself!”

“Hide them! You must hide them!”

“We will, we’ll hide them,” Karen reassured, holding the old woman’s hand in both of her own. She looked over her shoulder. “We have to call someone!”

“I’ll find Sister Elisa,” Foggy promised, then ran from the room.

Sister Angelica reached for Karen, grabbing her long hair and pulling her face forward with a yank. “He’s dangerous. Dangerous. He’ll hurt them. You have to hide them!”

Karen pried her hair out of the woman’s grip. “I will, I promise I will.” She twisted to the side and wrapped her arms around the old woman’s thin frame, slightly in awe that this was the same woman who had rattled her five days ago. “Who is dangerous, Sister Angelica? Who did this to you?”

“The devil. He’s the devil, child. The _devil_.”

The woman shook in her arms and Karen felt herself go cold. Could _Matt_ have—?

“Sister Elisa is unconscious,” Foggy declared, breathless, as he rounded the corner back in Sister Angelica’s room. “Looks like someone tore up her office. She’s breathing but…. I’m calling an ambulance.”

“She said the devil did this, Foggy,” Karen said, rocking slightly with the motion of the old woman’s tremors.

Foggy shook his head. “No. No possible way.”

“Lantom,” Sister Angelica muttered. “Lantom.”

“Shh-shh, it’s okay,” Karen soothed as Foggy called for an ambulance and asked for the police to follow.

“What did she just say?” Foggy asked, crouching down as ended the call.

“Lantom?” Karen shrugged, holding the old woman close.

“Oh, shit.”

“What? What is it?”

“That’s the name of Matt’s priest.”

“Oh, Foggy, no. He couldn’t!”

Foggy shot her an agonized look. “This place was a trigger, Karen. Maybe he just—“

“He never cried.” Sister Angelica clutched at Karen’s hair again, tugging hard. “Never cried. Nothing there, nothing.”

“Who never cried, Sister?” Karen asked. “Are you talking about Matt Murdock?”

Sister Angelica slowly released Karen’s hair and began to moan, a low, devastated sound that rattled Karen’s heart. Her eyes burned with unshed tears and she held the old woman tightly, trying to figure out what brought on such mania.

“Karen,” Foggy called suddenly and held up something before her eyes.

“Is that a…a syringe?”

“I think we both know what was in this.” Foggy snarled, looking at Sister Angelica’s trembling form.

“Oh, Foggy,” Karen gasped. “If that’s Dust….” A thought occurred to her and she reached out to grab Foggy’s wrist. “Where’s Bobby?”

Without a word, Foggy took off again. Karen waited, listening. When she heard the bang of the front door and the call of _Police!_ She shouted directions to lead them back to her. Brett Mahoney was the first through the door and stayed next to Karen until the EMTs found their way back. She told one of the paramedics about Sister Elisa, then stood up, stepping back and out of the way. Moments later, Foggy came back through the door.

“I can’t find Bobby anywhere,” he gasped, out of breath. “None of the other teachers have seen him.”

“Lantom,” Sister Angelica moaned. She reached for Karen. “Told him. Told him.”

Karen crouched down at the woman’s side, grasping the reaching hand and staying out of the way of the paramedics. “What did you tell Lantom, Sister?”

As though she’d fought for one moment of clarity, Sister Angelica surged forward, one hand grasping Karen’s jaw, blue eyes bright, and said, “I told Father Lantom!”

“Ma’am, we need to move her now,” one of the paramedics told Karen, gently removing the old woman’s hand and placing it under the straps of the stretcher.

Nodding, Karen stood and backed away. Foggy was leaning against the wall, watching the activity with vacant eyes.

“It wasn’t Matt,” he shook his head. “I questioned his…moral compass once. I won’t do it again.”

“She said _the devil_ , Foggy,” Karen reminded him. “That’s what she said about Matt when—“

“Oh, shit,” Foggy interrupted suddenly. “Lantom. Whoever did this is headed over to St. Pat’s.”

“Guys,” Brett broke in, heading over to them with his notebook flipped open. “I’m really sorry to tell you this, but Sister Elisa came to.”

“Why are you sorry to tell us that?” Foggy asked.

Brett shot him a barely-patient look. “She told us that Bobby Henley attacked her.”

“Oh, my God,” Karen and Foggy replied in shocked unison.

“But how…?” Karen looked at Brett in complete confusion. “He was so…I mean…. She took care of him! All this time.”

Brett shrugged. “Said he just lost it and started tearing up the office. He hit her with a book.”

“C’mon,” Foggy grabbed Karen’s arm. “We, uh…got some phone calls to make.”

Karen allowed herself to be pulled from the room. “Phone calls? Foggy, we don’t—“

“Shh,” he silenced her, waiting until they were outside of the children’s home before he turned to face her. “I think Bobby pulled a Keyser Soze.”

Karen opened her mouth, then clicked it shut, eyebrows up. “A…what?”

“You know, Verbal Kent? _Usual_ _Suspects_?”

Karen shook her head.

“Jesus, you’re as bad as Matt,” Foggy frowned, pulling his coat tighter against the cold. “I think Frank Tosky was right—Bobby’s been faking it.”

“You think _Bobby_ did this?”

Foggy frowned at her. “You’d rather believe it was Matt?”

He had her there.

“Why didn’t you want Brett to know?”

“We don’t know where Matt is,” Foggy said. “I don’t want to send a ton of police over to St. Pat’s if he’s…well, Daredeviling it. Sans suit.”

“So, what do we do?”

“We get the hell over to St. Pat’s,” Foggy declared. “Damn you, Murdock. First it’s a gym, now it’s a church.”

The storm picked up during their subway ride and when they stepped out onto the sidewalk from the station, Karen gasped at the bite in the air. Snow pelted her aching head and face like tiny daggers, turning her bare fingers into instant popsicles.

“I hope he’s there,” Foggy muttered, burrowing deeper into his coat. “This storm is going to be hell on his senses otherwise.”

“Foggy?” Karen called as she took two steps for every hurried one of Foggy’s. “I gotta say, I’m scared.”

“Yeah,” Foggy looped his arm through hers to link them together. “Me too.”

They reached St. Patrick’s and hurried up the steps. Karen half expected the big main doors to be locked this late at night, but Foggy push against the handle and it gave easily. Stepping inside left Karen breathless; the difference between the frigid air of the storm and the warmth of the sanctuary had her swaying against Foggy for a moment, feeling her skin prick back to life. It was dark inside, the only light coming from the front two alcoves where prayer candles had been lit.

They headed down the center aisle, shoes clicking noisily against the stone floor. Karen almost knelt to cross herself as they drew closer to the altar, but stopped as Foggy veered toward the confessional.

“Look,” he said, his voice pitched soft and sounding almost reverent.

Karen followed, gasping slightly at the sight of the destruction that had been hidden by shadows. The door to the priests’ compartment had been completely shattered and the curtain to the left was ripped from its moorings. Foggy bent forward, his fingers swiping at something on the frame.

“Tell me that’s not blood.”

“Can’t do that,” Foggy replied.

A crash followed by a harsh shout echoed toward them from the rectory at the front of the sanctuary. They didn’t even bother exchanging a glance; they simply ran toward the sound, finding their way around behind the pulpit and altar to a small door. It was cold and dark in the alcove, but a light glowed above them—from what appeared to be an opened rooftop door—and shone down on a flight of stairs.

At the top of the stairs, a body lay crumpled, partially on the landing.

Karen didn’t even think; she ran to the body. Foggy was seconds behind her, helping her roll the figure to its back. The unconscious visage of an older man—his priest’s collar plainly visible—shown pale in the light from the doorway. Karen pressed her cold, bare fingers against the man’s throat and sagged with relief when she felt a pulse.

“Think this is Father Lantom?” Karen asked.

“I’m going to go with yes,” Foggy said, peering up at the door. “Looks like a roof access.”

What seemed to be illumination from a security light shone down the narrow hall and Karen could see another body crumpled against the wall. She didn’t recognize that face, either, and he had no priest’s collar. He did, however, have a gun. And on his outstretched hand was the tattoo of a scorpion’s tail.

“Look,” Karen called, pointing to the tattoo.

“Guess you won’t need to sit with a sketch artist,” Foggy commented.

More shouts could be heard through the doorway.

“Foggy,” Karen said, her voice strangely steady considering how hard her heart was beating. Father Lantom groaned, stirring beneath her hands. “We need to get him out of here.”

“We haven’t found Matt yet,” Foggy snapped.

“He’s…up,” Father Lantom managed, his voice weak. “Up on the roof.”

“He’s out there?” Foggy repeated.

“Four men,” Lantom swallowed, blinking his eyes open, his gaze unfocused, “attacked. Matt tried…tried to get me out.”

“Shit,” Foggy started forward.

“Wait!” Karen cried, then nodded toward the unconscious man across the small hallway. “Gun.”

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Foggy muttered, grabbing the gun from the floor and heading up the other flight of stairs toward the roof access.

“Go with him,” Father Lantom ordered. “Help Matt.”

“I’m not going to leave you,” Karen protested. “You’re hurt!”

“Child, if the Lord wanted me, he would have taken me already,” Father Lantom told her, his voice growing stronger. “I’ll be okay. Matt won’t.”

Karen swallowed, nodded, and headed up the second set of stairs after Foggy. What she saw when she reached the doorway wasn’t something she would forget anytime soon. Standing in the semi-protection of the doorway, Karen stared out onto a miniature battlefield. The storm was raging – wind howling around the corner of the squared-off roof, battered pieces of what might have been bird cages at one time strewn across the cracked cement surface. A security light mounted to the side of the building shone like a theater spotlight on the battle waging below.

A man lay sprawled near the doorway, his face covered in blood, not moving. Two more moved in terrifying unison toward a figure standing with his back to the edge of the roof, the stone wall at his hips. The man lifted his face and Karen gasped, grabbing Foggy’s arm instinctively when she realized the man was Matt.

He was battered; blood streaking one side of his face and streaking his throat where it had been pouring from a split lip. He was listing slightly to the side, his arm tight against his ribs, both hands up in a posture of defense. His hair was plastered to his head with snow and sweat and his glasses were missing, the skin that was not blood-covered pink from the cold.

The most shocking thing of all, however, was the maniacal grin that split his face. As though he was _waiting_ for the men to get closer, drawing them in with an appearance of weakness. How his attackers didn’t see that and heed the warning, Karen didn’t know. Before either she or Foggy could say anything, shout a warning, offer a distraction, Matt was moving.

It was the same as that night in the rain: a dance of motion, grace, and violence. Karen was exhausted simply watching him. He was brutal, danger radiating from each swing of his fists, each duck of his shoulders. He slammed his forearm into the throat of one attacker while simultaneously kicking the legs out from beneath the other. Flipping his body over Throat Guy’s shoulders, he landed with is arm wrapped around the man’s neck keeping him as a shield against the weapon in the other man’s hand.

Karen couldn’t see what it was—a gun? Knife?—but Matt’s human shield kept him safe for the moment. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Foggy lift the gun stolen from the man in the hallway, his hand shaking, his aim wavering. With this storm and his nerves, he was just as liable to hit Matt as anyone else. Without saying a word, Karen grabbed the weapon from Foggy, checked the safety, checked the clip, then raised it, her wounded hand acting as the support for her grip.

In that time, Throat Guy—who outweighed Matt by about thirty pounds—had tossed Matt over his head and was proceeding to slam his fist against Matt’s jaw and cheekbone. Karen aimed. Matt flipped up, out of reach of the man’s meaty fists, and right into her line of fire. Karen exhaled, lowering the barrel of the gun.

“Do something!” Foggy demanded as the second assailant moved in, slamming Matt in the small of the back with a violent punch and causing him to cry out as he went to his knees. “If you’re gonna shoot, then shoot!”

“I’m trying _not_ to shoot Matt,” Karen snapped, feeling as though with the roar of the storm she was shouting into a hurricane.

Matt swept his foot out, knocking the second man down, but before he could rise, Throat Guy grabbed him by his torn T-shirt and slammed him back against the cement floor hard enough Karen felt her teeth rattle. Throat Guy stood, raising his large fist to strike Matt another time and Karen fired, hitting the man in the shoulder and causing him to stagger back toward the roof’s edge.

Twisting his body once more, impossibly, Matt was again on his feet, grabbing the flailing man and pushing him slightly to the side—as though he were aiming him—just before he allowed the man to tumble from the edge of the roof. Foggy cried out in instinctive protest and Karen released her breath. Matt stood, staggering back away from the edge of the roof, but just as he turned, his second assailant stepped forward, brutally shoving something into his side.

Karen had forgotten about the weapon.

Apparently, so had Matt.

His mouth opened in a wordless cry, his gasp of pain lost to the snowstorm. Karen saw the attacker lean forward and whisper something in Matt’s ear before pushing him away and turning to face them.

“Holy shit,” Foggy breathed.

Karen couldn’t even swear.

The man who’d stabbed Matt was Bobby Henley.

And the weapon, she now saw as he held them up before dropping them to the rooftop, was two syringes. Her stomach twisted as she guessed what had been in the now empty tubes. She stepped forward, rage burning so brightly inside of her that she barely felt the bite of the wind. Bobby tipped his hand in a mocking wave and ran for the edge of the roof and the fire escape.

She tore her watering eyes from Bobby’s escape to stare at Matt. A small burst of red now blossomed where the needles had ripped into his skin. Karen covered her mouth, unable to even choke out a cry of dismay.

The snow swirled around him like a miniature cyclone, wind gusting without mercy as they stood facing each other on the barren rooftop. He was breathing hard, shoulders heaving with the effort, mouth slightly parted as though trapped between gasping for air and trying not to scream. His hands—half curled into fists, blood-crusted knuckles visibly swollen in the pale light—shook at his sides, the motion a confession of vulnerability his lips would never utter.

He was swaying, not just from the force of the storm, but from his rapidly weakening body, yet he refused to move. It was as though he’d frozen there, trapped in a world that betrayed him by suppressing the fire that had always guided him. His expressionless eyes darted, fear drawn in blood and bruises on his face.

Foggy started to reach out, to offer a hand and guide his friend to safety. The storm surged then and turned the snow into icy pellets that sliced and burned. Matt stumbled forward, hand out in a helpless gesture of defiance against the forces buffeting him from outside and within.

“Foggy?”

A world of questions captured in a word.

“Here, buddy.” The emotion in Foggy’s voice was practically a living thing, stepping forward and standing between them, demanding to be recognized.

“I can’t….”

Whatever Matt was going to say was lost to the storm. He wavered, his legs buckling. Foggy was out of the doorway and across the roof before Matt’s knees hit the surface, his friend collapsing against him in a tangle of trembling limbs.

“I gotcha,” Foggy promised. Karen felt tears blend with the sting of snow across her cheek. “I gotcha, buddy.”

Matt said nothing, as if he already knew this was going to be one of the longest nights of his life.


	7. Matt

**

**Matt**

Foggy had been right: he hadn’t heard her. And he should have. He _should have_.

If he couldn’t save those closest to him, those only souls who actually gave a damn about him, what the hell was he even doing? He heard Karen call after him to wait, but he couldn’t stop. His only thought was to escape the ER.

He couldn’t breathe—the noise, the smells, the _feel_ of the hospital was suffocating. It wrapped around him like a sheet of chemical-soaked plastic and twisted, flooding his senses with ricocheting images of tears and joy and exhaustion and anger and pain, pain, _pain_. Matt bounced clumsily against a row of chairs in the hall outside of the ER’s main doors.

He felt as though he was drowning on too much air and simultaneously suffocating from the lack of it. Ignoring the calls to him, the half-concerned, half-irritated questions as to his well-being, the thousands of heart beats and bleats of machines, Matt slammed through the exit doors and out into the early evening. The winter landscape shrunk him until he was pushed back against the exterior wall of the hospital.

It had taken an enormous amount of concentration to navigate the city over the last few, snow-heavy days, but he’d managed it by tagging certain buildings with a scent or sound; the hospital, their office, his apartment, the police station, St. Patrick’s. He could center himself on that location and orient from there. It had worked to help him find and stop the two guys who were inexplicably about to torch an office building. It had worked to help him grab the _I’m just really hungry_ purse snatcher, who put up an unexpectedly vicious fight when caught after another attempt at mugging an elderly woman.

And it had worked to track the Messalas to where they were manufacturing the Dust.

The only reason he hadn’t ripped that place apart last night had been the two teenagers he’d heard crying out two blocks away, trapped in a haze of nightmare and pain from the drug. He’d been trying to find the empty warehouse building again all day, ignoring the aches and pains that surfaced not only from a week’s worth of fistfights, but from the elements themselves.

His city was cloaked in darkness and silence, betraying him even as he defended her.

Rooftops became less a haven for observation and more a labyrinth of sharp angles, unexpected drop-offs, and breath-stealing barricades. At one point he’d crashed into a dividing wall so hard he’d felt his skin tear open along his hairline, blood warm and wet against the chill of his skin.

When Foggy’s voicemail buzzed against his hip, Matt had cursed the interruption, feeling the grip of time tighten around him as he tried unsuccessfully to orient himself on the rooftop of his apartment. The message, though, sent him down the fire escape and toward the hospital without a thought to his ragged appearance or to the fact that he’d left the Daredevil suit in the footlocker. All he could focus on was the fear and tension in Foggy’s voice around the words _Karen’s hurt_.

Now, as the sounds of cars sloshing through the muck of snow and dirt on the streets buffeted against the sound-tempered buildings, Matt sucked in a gasp of frigid air and forced himself to be still. He listened desperately for the tag that marked his apartment, needing a direction. A safe haven. Somewhere he could finally breathe.

Instead of the loose steel gate outside of his building, he heard bells shifting against each other in the wind, the metallic half-ring a tease of sound, flirting with the edges of his perception. He turned, following the sound, dodging cars, climbing dumpsters as he cut through alleys. He slipped on the icy pavement, going to his knees, ramming his shoulder against a brick wall, but pulling himself up and moving forward.

Nothing mattered but the sound of the bells.

When he found church he paused at the door, his chilled hands curled around the metal latch. He needed balance, refuge, somewhere…some _one_ to shelter him. To tell him that what he was doing was right, made sense.

Because he couldn’t find that on his own any longer.

The sounds of the street muffled almost immediately when he stepped inside the shelter of the heavy doors. Breath rasping loudly in the quiet of the sanctuary, Matt wrapped his arms around his middle, trying to stifle his shaking. It was the second time in a week he’d stumbled into St. Pat’s half frozen. He listened to the low hum of prayers, the heartbeats of the faithful, trying to remember what day it was, where Father Lantom might be.

He couldn’t make it down to the kitchen, not like this, with his senses screwed five ways from Sunday. Instead, he sat carefully in one of the end pews, holding himself as still as his chilled body allowed and listened to the mass. They were familiar words, a rhythmic cadence that had always soothed him when the world got to be too loud.

He lost track of how long he sat there, rousing himself when he sensed the worshipers moving to take communion. He rose stiffly and made his way along the back of the sanctuary until he reached the far end of the pews, then slipped into an empty confessional, pulling the curtain closed behind him by habit. He sat in what he knew was darkness, the quiet wrapping around him like a blanket, and breathed.

It was right, what he was doing.

Wasn’t it?

He was helping people, doing what others wouldn’t. What others _couldn’t_.

Right?

He’d saved people this week. He’d pulled danger from the streets, keeping people safe. He was punished as he dealt out punishment. Whatever the sin committed protecting his city, he’d paid his dues.

The priest door opened abruptly and Matt flinched away, startled out of his dark thoughts. He could smell coffee and bourbon, wool and the sharp glint of aftershave. He knew the man had a weak knee – the left one – and it cracked whenever he sat or stood. He knew his heartbeat skipped every third rep and that his razor was too dull to get a close shave, his chin scraping against his robe as he bent his head in prayer, stiff fingers wrapping around a rosary.

“Matthew?”

“How’d you know it was me, Father?”

“You’re not the only one with hidden talents.”

“You saw me come in,” Matt guessed.

Father Lantom said nothing, waiting him out.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” Matt finally confessed. When Father Lantom took a breath, clearly intending to speak, Matt interrupted him. “I…got lost.”

“So do many who end up here.”

“I don’t mean spiritually, Father,” Matt corrected, feeling his throat close with a strange emotion.

The wooden seat beneath Lantom creaked as he shifted his weight. “Are you sure?”

Matt swallowed. “A friend of mine got hurt today. And I couldn’t stop it.”

“Where you there?”

Matt shook his head, conscious of the fact that Lantom wasn’t looking at him. “I didn’t hear her. And…I hear everything.”

“Matthew—“

“Father, I hear _everything_. I heard the bells from St. Pat’s when I was standing outside the hospital and they weren’t even ringing. I hear the whispered prayers of the mass. There’s an old man in the third row right now; his back hurts when he stands. I can tell because I hear the muscles twist and his heart rate speeds up.”

“And you didn’t hear your friend call for help.” Father Lantom’s voice was steady. Processing. Accepting.

“I wasn’t listening,” Matt sighed. “I’ve been…there’s so much…,” he rubbed his face, wincing as he accidentally irritated the cut above his eyebrow. “There is evil out in this world, Father. Actual evil. And I’m trying so hard to stop it. Stop it before it gets worse. I just….”

Father Lantom stayed quiet, breathing evenly.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” Matt repeated, an exhausted sigh slipping free.

“Perhaps you require absolution?”

Matt was silent for a moment. “Absolution requires contrition,” he said quietly. “And I don’t apologize for what I’ve done.”

“Let me help you, Matthew,” Father Lantom implored. “You are in pain. You don’t need to be.”

Lantom wasn’t speaking of the cut on his head, or his aching hands, or the bruises along his back and side. He wasn’t talking about the pain that could be seen by all; he was talking about the scars buried deep.

“You said that before,” Matt observed, listening as the sanctuary quieted, mass ending and people filing out to attend to their evenings. “I’m fine.”

Pain had always been part of his life. He’d trained himself to use it. He’d funneled it into a tightly woven fuse that propelled him through moments that would collapse him from the inside out were it not for that core. He’d become such a master of pain-weaving, he’d almost ceased to recognize it _as_ pain—as something that people normally shrink from.

“Matthew—“

He was so focused on Father Lantom’s possible next words that he didn’t hear the men approach. The doors to the church slammed open, bouncing off the stone walls and slapping back against outstretched hands. His senses were instantly on fire, hyper-alert, tracking their approach. They left a tattoo on his mind like an oil slick.

“ _LANTOM!_ ”

Matt heard the priest shift, instinctively preparing to reply.

“Don’t move,” he ordered in a low voice, wishing he could reach through the lattice screen and restrain the man.

“Come out here and talk to me, you bastard.”

Matt frowned. He didn’t know the voice, but he recognized the tone, the malice in the intent. He shifted, listening closer. Four men, two with weapons, heavy by their stride, heart rates elevated by adrenalin. They were moving down the center aisle, toward the altar.

“She told me she confessed,” the man continued, his voice a snarl. “She told you _all_ about it. Coulda just kept her fuckin’ mouth shut, but no, she had to be a good Catholic.”

“Oh, Lord,” Lantom whispered. It was not a prayer.

Matt shifted. “You know who this is?”

One of the men had turned toward the confessional. Matt felt along inside the small booth to see if there was anything he could use as a weapon.

“One of the Sisters at St. Agnes came to me yesterday for confession,” Lantom began.

“Quiet,” Matt ordered, realizing that two others had turned toward the confessional. The only one who hadn’t yet was the man who was still talking.

“Took care of her, but turns out…now I need to take care of _you_.”

Matt thought rapidly. “No matter what happens, stay here.”

The booth was empty of any sort of weapon, he was without his suit, outnumbered, and Father Lantom was vulnerable. He had to be swift.

Standing, he grasped the curtain just as the first man reached the confessional. Tearing the curtain open, he quickly grabbed the end of the heavy material and wrapped it around the man’s throat, pulling it tight and sending him staggering against the side of the confessional. Before Matt could shift, another man swung at him, crashing his fist across the side of his face and knocking his glasses free.

Matt slammed his foot against the knee of the man still in his grip and sent him down, then brought his hands up as the two others moved in. They weren’t interested in taking turns. Their fists rushed at him, slamming through the air as they made contact, drawing blood from a shattered lip. He ignored it, moving through their onslaught, unconcerned that he was potentially exposing his abilities with his refusal to curl up in a corner, weeping as his face was split open.

One man pushed him back so abruptly he didn’t have time to catch his balance and he crashed through the wooden door of the confessional, revealing Father Lantom to the eyes of the man who’d come for his blood.

“ _There_ you are,” the man called as if greeting an old friend. “First place I shoulda looked.”

The three men swarmed Matt before he could rise from the splintered wood and tangle of limbs, grabbing his arms and holding him fast as Lantom rose to his feet.

“Gotta admit,” the man said, coming closer. Matt could smell something nauseatingly familiar: lemon-scented cleaner. It rolled off the man as though he’d bathed in it. “Didn’t expect you to have such a devoted congregation, Father.”

Lantom said nothing. A quick shift of focus told Matt that the man was simply stubborn, not injured.

“I know you from someplace?” the man asked, now standing in front of Matt. “You seem….”

Matt saw the world of flames shift around the man as he snapped his fingers rapidly in Matt’s face.

“Son of a bitch,” the man breathed. “Fellas, be gentle. This here’s my lawyer.”

Matt went cold. In all his searching into the Messala family, all of this follow up on the cold case facts, he hadn’t found one piece of evidence that would have convicted Bobby Henley of the murder of his parents. And yet, there had been something about the story, about the pieces in the case….

“You were working with the Messalas,” Matt growled, not bothering to pull against his captors, reserving his strength for when he had to save Lantom. “All this time.”

“Not _all_ this time,” Bobby huffed slightly. “I mean, they bailed for a lotta years. Left me high and dry. Only thing I could do was wait it out with the Sisters of Can’t See What’s Right Under Our Noses.”

“One of them did,” Matt pointed out.

“Fuckin’ Sister Angelica,” Bobby growled. “That old bat never liked me.”

Matt felt his stomach tighten at her name. She’d been his warden, his disciplinarian. She’d told him the reason Stick had walked away was because of his wicked heart. She’d seen to it that he’d been alone, not even a roommate to speak to, for his _protection_ , she’d claimed.

He’d hated her every day for years, burning with a quiet resentment until he’d been able to channel the pain, anger, and loneliness into a force behind his fist. Until he’d discovered he could help in the shadows, in the background, lonely, but not alone.

And she’d had a hand in making him into that person.

“What did you do to her?”

Bobby laughed. It sent shivers across Matt’s skin.

“She got about 10 cc’s of straight-up Dust. Never gave anyone that much before. Her old mind is going to be toast. No way she’s telling the cops anything about me and the Messalas,” Bobby huffed, stepping closer so that Matt could feel the man’s breath on his face. “Which means I just gotta tie up a couple of loose ends here.”

“Did you kill your parents, Henley?” Matt asked in a low voice.

“Shouldn’t matter to you,” Bobby commented almost too casually. “Innocent until proven guilty, right?”

“Pretty sure this is my proof.” Matt grunted as one of the men holding him twisted his grip.

“You were here for confession, Murdock? Lots of sins on a blind man’s conscience, that it? Touch a few things you weren’t supposed to?” Bobby huffed a laugh when Matt remained silent. “Well, Father Lantom’s about to be otherwise occupied and,” Bobby leaned forward once more, mint and onions warring for dominance on his breath, “I’m not in a particularly forgiving mood.”

Matt waited until he heard Father Lantom’s heartbeat accelerate and then he exploded. He crashed his forehead against Bobby’s nose, grabbing the throat of one of his captors and the ear of the other and slamming them toward each other. The fourth man, standing behind Bobby, was too busy catching his falling comrades to attack.

Matt turned to Lantom.

“Go!”

Father Lantom ran, escaping out through the side of the sanctuary, Matt at his heels. He felt a rush of cold air as Lantom opened a door, but was caught and shoved against the door frame before he could follow the priest through. He felt his cheek open up with the impact and grabbed the tail-end of the pain, using it to spurn him forward as he turned, repeatedly driving his fist into the face of the man who’d tackled him.

He felt three men run past him after Father Lantom and he grabbed the back of the man’s head and crashed against the wall next to the door before running after Lantom himself. The stairs caught him by surprise: he hadn’t expected an immediate flight of stairs and landed face-first on the wood. The man he’d been pummeling ran over him, intent on catching Lantom.

Matt gained his footing and gave chase, his whole being centered on getting to Father Lantom before the four men. He heard a crash and a gasp above him and an exhale of air faded to a groan as a body slumped against the stairs and a heartbeat slowed. A familiar heartbeat. One that had balanced him.

The growl that erupted from deep within Matt wasn’t quite sane. He wanted blood. He was going to tear these men apart.

Matt grabbed the first man he reached and slammed him against the wall. He had no way of knowing if there was light around him or if they were as blind as he; his attack was vicious and meant to maim. He felt the man in his grip slump after another crash against the wall and released him, realizing that the others were actually running from him, up another flight of stairs.

“Fire escape!” Bobby Henley yelled to his men.

Matt followed, reaching the rooftop and was momentarily suffocated by snow. It coated every surface, peppering the air and sending him tilting. He felt the rush of air as a fist came close, missing him in the confusion of darkness. He retaliated, shoving the flat of his hand forward and making contact, hearing the crunch of bone and cartilage, the satisfying copper scent of blood filling his nostrils. The body fell heavily across the doorway and Matt waded forward into the storm.

The world truly blinded him, the snow swirling and stinging and seeking to take his balance, but he found in that moment his body remembered. He had fought so hard and for so long that his muscles obeyed, fists made contact, body dodged, lungs tempered action. The fight was brutal; he felt skin split, bruises rise, blood pour. His perception was rattled when he was slammed against the roof, a heavy fist working to break him completely.

He suddenly smelled gun powder through the snow.

The crack of the bullet took him by surprise, but he was in tune enough to know that the man was about to fall to his death, no chance for prosecution. Matt grabbed him and shoved him to the side so that when he toppled, he landed in the opened—and rather full—dumpster two stories below.

There was only one left, and he knew exactly what to do with that—

The pain was abrupt and shocking, narrow slices of needles cutting into his belly, a burning hiss of liquid tumbling through his system. He couldn’t grab one breath of air.

“I watched him cut her,” Bobby Henley rasped in his ear, his hands gripping Matt’s shoulder tightly as he twisted the needles against his midsection. “I watched her bleed dry. And then I pounded his face in with a brick until there was nothing left.”

He pushed Matt away, pulling the needles free as he did. Fear suddenly gripped Matt, the likes of which he’d not known since the day he couldn’t find his father’s heartbeat. He knew what had been in those syringes, what now burned through his body like acid. _Dust_. The drug he’d been fighting to rid the city of was now tearing its way toward his heart and in moments he wouldn’t know his own mind.

The world that usually burned and flickered went cold and dark as his heart raced, his hands shook, his lungs seized. He would feel this, every moment of this, he knew. He would feel as the drug ripped him apart and left raw, bloody pieces of his soul behind.

Dimly, as if from miles away, Matt suddenly heard the familiar rap of a heartbeat he knew as well as his own.

One that had saved him from true darkness.

One that was home to him.

“Foggy?”

His body was suddenly on fire. The flames were liquid, pouring through his system and leaving ash in their wake. He couldn’t breathe, reaching instinctively toward where he sensed Foggy standing. Suddenly arms were around him as he felt himself falling and he smelled the familiar blend of aftershave, laundry detergent, and bagels.

Before he could do anything more than cling to Foggy with the desperate grasp of a drowning man, he felt himself slipping over an edge, as though someone had lifted him and tossed him from the roof. Disoriented, he tried to pull away but found his arms to be weighted, too heavy to lift. And then his mind seemed to explode. He cried out, slipping along the fabric of reality into something impossible.

He could see.

He was standing inside of Hell, but he could see. He could see his old apartment, could see blood covering his father’s face. He could see the streets behind Fogwell’s, could see the traffic, could see the old man who didn’t hear him, could see the delivery truck, could see the barrels of chemicals, could see the ground rushing toward him and suddenly the pain was searing.

Matt screamed, reaching for his eyes, clawing at them, desperate to wipe the liquid away. A voice—at once familiar and foreign—urged him to calm down.

“I’m here, okay, Matty? I’m right here.”

But he wasn’t…he _wasn’t_ right there because he’d fucking died.

He’d let those bastards get take him away, and turn him into a thing, a mess of blood and bone and _oh God_ he could feel it.

He could feel it sliding under his hands wet and sticky and smelling so strongly of money and loss. He could smell the rot of the alley and feel the concrete beneath his knees and hear the roll of an empty plastic cup nearby and the static of a radio and someone sighing heavily as they patted him comfortingly on his head and _why didn’t they just fucking leave him alone_?

He had to be in Hell. His body was burning, aching, broken. He slipped along impressions of voices speaking around him, not to him. He felt their hands holding him down and telling him it was for his own good. He felt needles in his skin. They were stabbing him, cutting into him, cutting the Devil out. He could feel the Devil writhing inside, twisting and biting and turning him into something new.

 Heat slid along his back, wrapping around his side like a branding iron, pushing him and breaking him until he arched away, wanting to fight, wanting to get up, get up, that’s all his dad had to do, right, just _get up_.

_It ain’t how you hit the mat…it’s how you get back up._

“You’re okay, buddy, come on, just breathe, okay?”

They wouldn’t let him up. He had to fight through it, be a weapon, find his balance. He had to use his body to push them away and keep them safe, stay alone, stay safe. God, why did it fucking _hurt_ so much?

_We all pay for our choices, kid._

There were hands on him. Insistent and urgent, pulling at him and bruising him. _Had_ he chosen this? Did he want this? Want to hurt? Want to cause pain?

He’d made this choice. To be this thing. To tame the Devil and be alone in this.

Be alone in the world.

_Smart is making the right decision at the right time_.

The hands seemed to multiply. There were so many he couldn’t tell who they belonged to, if any were his own. They hurt, and goddammit, he was tired of hurting. He was tired of listening to every sound, the sounds under the voices, behind the noises, the words people didn’t say when they were talking.

He was tired of the world being so loud.

“C’mon, Matt, you’re stronger than this. You can beat this, now, c’mon!”

_Be careful of the Murdock boys. They got the Devil in ‘em._

It was better this way. Better alone. He couldn’t get them hurt. Couldn’t hurt anymore.

“Please, Matt, just listen to my voice, okay? Just listen to me. You’re not alone. You never were.”

He heard the voice. And the others that joined it. They ebbed, splashing on his ears like water. He wanted to sink beneath the surface where the darkness was pervasive. The darkness he’d always worked around, struggled against. It waited for him now; in a place where pain was non-existent. Where it didn’t matter who he was or wasn’t.

Beneath the surface the past was not even a memory. It was nothing.

He wanted to be nothing.


	8. Foggy

**

**Foggy**

Matt’s weight was surprising. For such a slim man, he was definitely compact, muscle mass being just that: mass.

Foggy hadn’t expected his friend to go limp so quickly and he staggered as Matt shook, breath a staccato burst of warmth against his neck. Hefting Matt up so that he could get a better grip, Foggy dragged him back in through the door, past the bloody-faced body that Karen had pushed aside and into the darkened alcove.

“Karen,” he gasped as Matt slipped lower, groaning as Foggy tried once more to ratchet him up. “Need you to call Claire.”

Karen moved to help him hold up Matt but stopped and stared at him in shock. “My ER nurse Claire?”

“She can help.”

“Foggy, I’m calling the police and an ambulance,” Karen declared, a frown bisecting her smooth brow.

“Fine, sure, okay,” Foggy, grunted, pressing up against the wall and lowering Matt to the ground.

Blood joined the snow in matting Matt’s hair against his head, Foggy now saw, and was smeared across half of his face from various cuts on his cheek and around his mouth. His head lolled to the side and his eyes moved rapidly beneath his lids, which just weirded Foggy the hell out because what was he seeing in his dreams that put that tortured expression on his face? What was he _seeing_ at all?

He hadn’t seen anything since he was nine years old.

“But call Claire, too.”

Karen shook his head. “Fog—“

“Father?” Foggy called down the stairwell, feeling something shift within him. As though the terror that had gripped him on the rooftop was simply gone with the abruptness of a popped balloon. “You still with us?”

“I’m here.” His voice sounded weak and weary, but steady and alert enough that Foggy decided he was officially off of his worry list.

“We need a place to take Matt,” Foggy told him, crouching and gathering Matt against him partly to try to warm him up, partly to reassure himself that Matt was breathing.

“We’re taking him to the _hospital_ ,” Karen barked angrily. “Look at him, Foggy! They beat the hell out of him!”

“I _know_ that!” Foggy snapped. “You think this is the first time I’ve seen him like this?”

Karen blinked at that, drawing back as the significance of what he’d just told her sank in.

“You ready to explain his scars? The bruises? This beating? The man is _blind_ , Karen.”

“I know that,” she replied, subdued.

“Besides, Bobby Henley just tried to kill him and that lunatic’s still out there. _And_ he knows who Matt is,” Foggy reminded her. “How long you think it’ll take him to find Matt at a hospital?”

Karen rubbed her face. “So…what? What do we tell them about all this?” She waved her hand at the body on the floor.

“You tell them I was attacked in my sanctuary,” Father Lantom spoke up. Foggy looked over at him in surprise. The man was slumped on the stairs, shadows slightly masking the large bruise along the side of his face. “You tell him the Daredevil fought them off.”

Foggy’s eyebrows bounced up and he looked over at Karen. “It’s not a lie.”

Karen began to mutter beneath her breath, but dug her phone out of her coat pocket. Foggy grasped Matt beneath his arms, pulling the man up into a hug, then shrugged him over a shoulder, grabbing the wall with one hand to gain his footing.

“Damn, Matt. You’re freaking heavy,” Foggy grunted, grateful when he felt someone behind him, a balancing hand on Matt’s back.

“This way,” Father Lantom said, his voice startlingly close.

They carefully navigated the stairs to the bottom of the alcove, Foggy stalwartly trying to ignore Matt’s increased mutterings as his body twitched across Foggy’s shoulder. Lantom led him to the left at the bottom of the stairs, away from the sanctuary and through a pocket door Foggy hadn’t even noticed when they’d barreled up the stairs.

On the other side of the door was a small room with a desk, an old couch, and a bookshelf filled with musty-smelling books.

“I use this room to prepare for mass,” Father Lantom told him. “We can rest Matthew on the couch.”

“Thanks, Father,” Foggy grunted, trying to ease Matt off his shoulder and onto the couch.

Panting from the effort, Foggy straightened and pulled his jacket off. Grabbing a handful of tissues from the square box on the desk, he began to gently wipe the blood from Matt’s face, starting with his chin where his bottom lip looked like it was split in half.

Matt began to twitch again, his hands moving like he was reaching for something, his face pulled into a frown. Foggy heard Karen enter the room and say something to Father Lantom but he was too focused on Matt’s increasingly agitated movements to pay attention to what she was saying.

Without warning, Matt gasped, reaching for his face, his fingers clawing at his eyes. Foggy grabbed at his hands.

“Easy, buddy, don’t—“

Matt’s raw, terrified scream startled them all. Foggy jerked away, hands up in surrender as Karen instinctively reached for Father Lantom’s arm for reassurance. Matt whimpered, ripping his hands from Foggy’s grip and reaching once more for his eyes, another scream tearing from his throat.

“What the fu—“

“Something’s wrong with his eyes?” Karen whispered urgently.

“No, no, it’s the drugs,” Foggy realized. “God _dammit_ , that Dust shit is hitting him.”

“Foggy, didn’t you say he feels things more than--?”

Matt fought against Foggy’s grip, reaching for his eyes once more.

“I’m here, okay, Matty? I’m right here.” Foggy held Matt’s hands tighter, pulling them down and away from his face while Matt muttered something unintelligible, sweat matting his hair to his forehead.

“What’s the word on Claire?” Foggy asked, breathless from the effort of holding onto Matt.

“She’s on her way,” Karen reassured him. “She’s coming from her apartment, so I guess that’s closer?”

“And the cops?”

“I believe they‘re here,” Father Lantom said, looking out through the opened door. “Stay here. Keep him quiet.”

He slid the door closed behind him.

“Karen, go watch for Claire,” Foggy instructed. “She won’t know where to go.”

As soon as he was alone with Matt, Foggy suddenly felt vulnerable. The night he’d found Matt bleeding out in his apartment wasn’t as frightening as this moment, not knowing what the drug in Matt’s system was putting him through. Watching Matt shiver and sweat, his swollen eyes closed but roaming, Foggy was suddenly struck with the overwhelming urge to find Bobby Henley and beat the shit out of him.

No, worse. Shoot _him_ up with Dust until he was living his own personal Hell.

Matt shuddered, his hands now loose from Foggy’s grip. Foggy could tell a lot about Matt’s moods by the way he slept…and by how hard he swung when he was startled awake. Even back in Columbia, Matt had been a restless sleeper. Before Foggy had known the truth of his friend’s past, he’d known Matt had secrets. There were things not quite said, half sentences that ended in disarming grins.

But the biggest tell had been the way Matt slept.

Foggy wanted to ask what his friend saw in his nightmares but he’d never did. Instead, he’d simply tried to wake him, resorting to barking out a sharp, _“Murdock! Wake up!”_ after Matt had nearly broken his nose the first time he’d shaken his friend awake. Even when he wasn’t trapped in a bad dream, though, Matt slept tense.

As though he was waiting for the bottom to drop out of the world.

Knowing how he’d been kept separate from the other kids at St. Agnes, how he’d spent so much time on his own learning to navigate the world, Foggy found himself struggling with a balance between rage and pity. Sniffing, Foggy continued his meager ministrations with the tissues, trying to clean the blood away from Matt’s face. When the pocket door slid open, he didn’t look up, thinking it was Karen returning.

“How long ago was he dosed?”

Foggy jumped up, startled. “Claire?”

She was in sweats and a white hoodie, which she quickly discarded, shoving the sleeves of her long sleeved T-shirt up past her elbows.

“How’d you get in here?”

“Karen told me to come to the side entrance,” she told him briskly, not offering more. “She’s out there talking to the cops.”

“Lantom?”

“In an ambulance.” She sat on the couch at Matt’s hip and snapped a pair of purple latex gloves in place. “How long ago?” she repeated, carefully checking Matt’s bruised and cut face, lifting the hem of his T-shirt to glimpse his chest, pressing gently at the puncture marks just below his ribcage.

“Um…about twenty minutes?”

“Karen said two syringes?”

“Yeah,” Foggy nodded, not taking his eyes from what Claire was doing.

He marveled at how she was able to efficiently roll Matt first to one side, then the other, removing his wet jacket before taking a pair of scissors from the pack she brought with her and cutting his T-shirt up the middle and through the sleeves, peeling it away from Matt’s skin.

With Matt’s chest exposed to the soft light of the prayer room, Foggy could see the extent of the damage as well as tracks of the old scars he’d mentioned to Karen, the largest on his lower right flank, still knotted and raised.

The man was purple and black with bruising. The marks Foggy had seen earlier in the week at the gym had faded to green and yellow and had been replaced by new imprints of fists, boots, and at least one cement floor, Foggy knew.

“Jesus, Matt,” Claire muttered, moving to check the cut on his cheek and along his hairline. “A few of these cuts are going to need stitches. Did he hit his head?”

“Uh, yeah, about ten times,” Foggy huffed. “He had some help, though.”

“I bet my next paycheck he has a concussion, but with that drug—“

Matt arched his neck and cried out, his shaking suddenly increasing. Claire was immediately in motion, pulling out a saline bag and a small catheter. Matt began to hyperventilate; whatever he was reliving was _not_ fun.

“Foggy, I need you to hold him still, okay?” Claire instructed.

“What are you doing?”

“We gotta try to flush that drug out of his system,” Claire muttered, slipping the catheter into the back of Matt’s hand and fastening it there before climbing up to the back of the couch and holding the saline bag up. “Just hold him still.”

Foggy moved forward, but before he could reach out, Matt cried out once more, his back bowing upwards as though he were trying to escape the pain. His breath became staccato, uneven bursts of air, his fingers twisting and gripping along the material of the couch.

Kneeling down next to the couch, Foggy grasped Matt’s shoulders in the only places he didn’t see bruising. “You’re okay, buddy, come on, just breathe, okay?”

Matt shuddered out a breath, not listening to or not hearing Foggy’s coaching. Foggy kept up a low litany of encouragement as Claire fastened the saline bag to a crucifix hanging on the wall.

“Pretty sure that’s a sacrilege,” Foggy muttered.

“I’ll say a few Hail Mary’s,” Claire retorted. She moved down around Foggy and checked Matt’s pulse. “Shit, it’s way too fast.”

“What do we do?” Foggy asked as Karen slipped back into the room.

Claire rubbed her face, thinking. “We can give him a beta-blocker,” she said, “but without proper heart monitoring equipment, I don’t know how to fully regulate it.”

Matt’s breathing began to rival that of an Olympic runner. Foggy grabbed his friend’s hand and began to rub his thumb into the hollow of Matt’s palm, the way his mother had done for him when he was in full-on panic mode. He watched as Claire readied a syringe and injected a small amount of liquid into a vein in Matt’s arm.

He glanced at Karen once, his fear and panic a living thing that reached out and wrapped around her. Her eyes were red-rimmed and wet, her cheeks flushed, but her back was ramrod straight and her hands strong as she gripped Foggy’s shoulder in reassurance. Matt began to mutter again, the words choked and broken with staggered breaths.

“So loud…everything’s s’loud….”

Claire had her fingers at Matt’s pulse, her face pulled into a fierce frown. She pulled the latex from her left hand and laid it flat against Matt’s chest. “C’mon, Matt, you’re stronger than this. You can beat this, now, c’mon!”

“’m alone…always…. Better.”

Foggy heard Karen’s breath catch and felt her hair brush the side of his face as she leaned closer. “Please, Matt, just listen to my voice, okay? Just listen to me. You’re not alone. You never were.”

Matt gasped a few more times, like sobs after a torrent of tears. Foggy could feel his friend’s hand jerk a couple times in his loose grip and then he went abruptly and eerily silent.

As if someone had pushed the pause button on their lives.

“No,” Claire breathed, rising from her knees in one fluid motion. “No, nonono. God _dammit_ , Murdock, don’t you do this.”

“What? What is it?” Foggy asked, panic turning his voice thin.

“Move!” Claire ordered. “Out of my way, now!”

Foggy and Karen stood and backed up quickly as Claire swung up to straddle Matt, sitting on his hips and positioning her arms at his sternum.

“Cardiac arrest,” Claire barked. “Fucking drug overwhelmed his heart.”

Foggy felt his hands go numb. The world began to narrow, a tunnel of black curling up around the edges of his vision. He blinked, trying to clear his line of sight but suddenly realized he couldn’t feel his lips. Without being truly conscious of it, he allowed Karen to push him into a hard, wooden chair that had previously been sitting behind the small desk.

He heard Karen speaking and watched in disjointed fascination as the two women fought to bring his best friend back to life.

“I have the air,” Karen said to Claire, who simply nodded as she continued to count reps under her breath, her slim body rocking with the effort.

As Foggy watched, Claire finished fifteen reps, then paused as Karen tipped Matt’s head slightly back, held his nose and breathed open-mouthed into him. One long breath, then she raised her head, Matt’s blood streaked across her lips and cheek. Claire began again and Foggy found himself wanting to curl inwards in protection from the force of her thrusts. Karen leaned forward and breathed for Matt once more and Foggy saw Matt’s torso buck slightly.

“That’s it,” Claire encouraged. “That’s it, Matt, come on back to us.”

Matt coughed roughly and Claire jumped off of him and, with Karen’s help, turned him gently to his side, easing the effort on his lungs. His eyes stayed closed, but he was breathing. Foggy knew enough even in his shocked state to know that if Matt was breathing, his heart was beating.

And all of that was very, very good.

“You guys,” Foggy said weakly, “you guys are amazing.”

The two women looked over at him.

“What you just did. You just…. I’m just gonna…think I need to, uh, fall over or something.”

“Karen,” Claire said, her voice still worry-rough and commanding, “put his head between his legs.”

Karen was at his side as though she’d teleported there, her cool hands on his neck, her soft voice in his ear. His vision was graying out again and he allowed himself to be manhandled until he was leaning over, his forehead resting on his right knee. He could feel Karen’s hand at his back, rubbing soothing circles, her voice reassuring him that he was okay, that Matt was okay.

He could hear Claire speaking to Matt, but when Matt didn’t respond, he knew it was just her way of offering the same type of reassurance, telling him what she was doing to him—stitching his wounds, binding his bones, cleaning his skin—so that he wouldn’t startle in his hyper-sensitive state.

As the world came back into balance for Foggy, he eased carefully upright, Karen keeping her hands on him. It struck him, then, the story he was seeing in that small prayer room.

A man who willingly put his life on the line, who delivered and absorbed pain in equal measure, who would die to protect any one of them, was lying helpless and trembling while a slight, deceptively fragile-looking woman with staggering strength put his broken pieces back together again.

A lawyer who used sarcasm and humor as both a spear and a shield, who followed the letter of the law to defend the innocent and condemn the guilty, was pale and sweaty while a slim woman with a sweet smile and childlike eyes talked him back from the brink.

Those women had just saved Matt’s life.

Foggy reached for Karen’s slender hand, gripping it solidly but gently in his much larger one, and sighed as she leaned against him—as though for her own comfort as well as his. They watched as Claire finished stitching Matt’s cheek and lip, placing butterfly bandages on the wound on his forehead, then changed out the saline bag.

“Should he be sweating that much?” Karen asked.

Foggy looked at Matt’s face and bare chest. Both were shiny with sweat even as he wrapped his arms around his middle, shivering.

“His body is trying to get rid of the drug,” Claire explained. “The victims we’ve seen in the ER have usually come around after two or three bags of saline and soaking through three sets of sheets.”

“Isn’t there any other way to—“

“Not that we’ve found,” Claire interrupted, checking Matt’s pulse once more. “I really want to take him to the hospital after that cardiac episode.” She sighed. Foggy and Karen waited, neither ready to disagree with her. “But I didn’t take him when he was bleeding out, so.”

“Brett said that they would put a guard on Father Lantom,” Karen offered. “They have an APB out on Bobby Henley, too.”

“Is that the guy who did this to him?” Claire asked, looking at them over her shoulder. There was enough venom in her voice and eyes that Foggy instantly pitied anyone who crossed her in this moment.

“Yeah,” Foggy replied, finally releasing Karen’s hand so that she could sink down to sit on the floor next to him. “He’s…er, well, he _was_ our client. I’m pretty sure we’re fired at this point.”

A slightly-hysterical, helpless laugh bubbled up from Karen. She covered her mouth quickly, then looked with wide blue eyes over at Claire and Matt, then back to Foggy.

“I’m sorry,” she said, unable to completely remove the smile from her face. “I don’t know why I’m laughing. None of this is funny.”

Claire offered her a tired smile, her hand still resting on Matt’s arm. “It’s actually a very natural reaction,” she said. “Y’know, to finding out your friend is secretly a superhero—“

“Who gets his ass handed to him on a regular basis,” Foggy broke in.

“—and your other friend knew all about it—“

“Even though he’d have been just find being in the dark for pretty much the rest of his life.”

“—and your client is a lunatic—“

“Who may or may not have killed two people.”

By the time Claire and Foggy were finished, Karen had shifted from helpless laughter to quiet tears. She pulled her knees up and covered her face with her hands, mindful of the stitches in both. Foggy sat quietly, giving her the space she needed to compose herself. Claire grabbed Foggy’s discarded jacket from the floor and draping it over Matt’s bare chest and shoulders.

Foggy didn’t miss the way his friend seemed to instinctively burrow deeper into the soft fabric; he imagined the tweed-like material of the couch had to be like sandpaper against Matt’s overly-sensitized skin. The jacket seemed to dwarf Matt, making it seem momentarily impossible that he was capable of orchestrating the violence and damage Foggy had witnessed just a few moments before.

“He saved my life, you know,” Karen said quietly, sniffing away the last of her tears. “Day after I met him. I didn’t know it was him. It was the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. All in black, flipping around in the rain.” Foggy looked down toward where she sat, watching as she remembered. “The other guy was just…he was big and scary and he had a knife and…and Matt, he…he just charged in. He used everything he could—chains, a fire escape, the ground. He was bleeding. A lot. But he saved me. And then he walked away.”

“And showed up to work the next morning,” Foggy remembered. “And told me he’d tripped while taking out the garbage.”

“’s kinda true,” Karen chuffed.

“He saved my life, too,” Claire said quietly.

She was looking at Matt, gently brushing his tangled hair from his eyes. Her body was flush against his, as though he’d purposely curled around her as he combatted the pain of the drug. Who knows, maybe he had. The one thing Foggy knew Matt rarely ever got was comfort. He frowned as Matt began to mutter softly, his body shaking under the large jacket.

“I thought he said you found him in a dumpster,” Foggy recalled.

“I did,” Claire said, her smile both amused and pained. “But later, the men who almost killed him came after me.”

“Jesus,” Karen whispered.

“He never said,” Foggy told her, apologetically.

Claire lifted a shoulder. “He wouldn’t have would he?” She glanced at them. “How much does Matt ever actually _say_ about anything he does?”

Foggy and Karen stayed silent, listening.

Claire looked back at Matt’s shuddering form. “They hurt me. A lot. But then…he found me. And he hurt them. _A lot_.” This time her smile was mean, cold, and Foggy found himself liking her more than he probably should, based on her complicated relationship with Matt. “And when it was over and they were…,” she paused, cleared her throat, then continued, “he just gathered me up and told me it was okay, he had me.”

She laid her palm on the side of his face. “I have you,” she said.

The moment suddenly felt charged with something Foggy wasn’t sure he was supposed to be witnessing. He swallowed and ran his hands through his sweaty hair, trying to think of what to say next. As per usual, Karen saved him.

“It’s a good thing you’re a little bigger than Matt, Foggy,” she said, gently teasing. “Your jacket’s basically the only blanket we have here.”

“A little?” Claire chuckled, adjusting the jacket as Matt’s trembling shifted it down over his bare shoulder.

“Hey, c’mon now,” Foggy picked up the vibe of the room. “I’ll have you know that I do marathons.” Off of Karen’s raised eyebrow he continued, “On Netflix.”

The women chuckled appreciatively, and Karen patted his leg.  It seemed they were going to settle in for the night; moving Matt at this point was going to be impossible and none of them were willing to leave. After a bit, Karen left at Claire’s instruction and retrieved cool, wet clothes. As Claire used them to soothe Matt’s sweaty skin, Foggy and Karen wandered the church in search of food. When they found the kitchen, Foggy said he felt a bit like he was going to be struck by lightning, taking food from the kitchen of a church.

“We’ll buy Father Lantom some groceries when all this is over,” Karen offered, cradling several apples in the crook of her arm. “Wait. Is that…an espresso machine?”

The pearled light of dawn had started to find its way through the stained glass windows of the sanctuary when the duo started back toward the prayer room, well-stocked with food and coffee. Half-way across the sanctuary, however, Foggy heard Matt cry out. Not just a wordless scream this time. This time, Matt was calling for him.

“ _Foggy_!”

“He’s fine, Matt, he’s okay,” Claire was saying as they entered the room, Karen closing the pocket door behind them. “He’s not hurt, I promise.”

Foggy set his collection of food on the desk and moved to stand next to Claire as she crouched over the couch where Matt lay. His jacket had been tossed on the floor and Matt’s eyes were open, though he was clearly not even close to fully conscious.

“What happened?” Foggy asked, confused. Matt had been sleeping when they left—seemingly out of the woods.

“It just hit him,” Claire said somewhat frantically, her hands on Matt’s shoulders, trying to keep him from launching himself off the couch. “Some kind of fever dream. He thinks—“

“Stick, lemme go,” Matt said, sounding as clear as he had all night. He reached up and grabbed Claire’s wrist in an obviously painful grip. “Nobu…he’s going to…Foggy won’t survive that. Not that.”

“Matty, hey,” Foggy eased Claire out of the way and held Matt’s wrists, freeing her from his friend’s too-strong grip. “I’m right here, okay?”

With a shout of alarm, Matt jackknifed forward, hands flat on Foggy’s chest and pushed him back with more strength than Foggy gave him credit for at the moment.

“Get the hell away from me,” Matt growled, eyes rolling closed as his face folded in pain.

He wrapped an arm around his middle and curled inward. Foggy tried to use that opening to push Matt back against the couch, but Matt slapped his hand away, rolling to his side. He groaned, low and breathless, his face paling.

Claire lunged for the nearly-empty saline bag, but wasn’t quick enough. Matt staggered upright, yanking the catheter from the back of his hand. He didn’t even seem to register the new pain, or the blood that now ran down his hand and dripped from his middle two fingers. He kept his free hand wrapped around his side, but moved away from the people in the room, face tilting from one to the other, until his back was against the opposite wall.

“Matty, it’s us, okay?” Foggy tried, not approaching him. “It’s Karen and Claire and Foggy.”

Matt’s expression knotted in confusion. “Where’s Stick?”

“There’s no—“ Foggy broke off when Matt’s head jerked to the side as if someone had just spoken to him. He looked to Claire in confusion, asking, “Has this happened to any of the others? This…disorientation?”

Claire shook her head helplessly. “None of the others got as much as him.”

Matt shook his head hard, as if trying to banish a thought, or clear vision that simply wouldn’t be cleared. He reached up with an unsteady hand and wiped at his eyes, blinking rapidly and shaking his head again. Karen covered her mouth, capturing a rough sob. Foggy took a quick breath.

“Something’s not right,” Matt muttered. “What’s…I can’t…it’s all dark.”

“Shit,” Foggy whispered, swallowing harshly.

Matt jerked his head up at the sound, then abruptly recoiled from whatever it was to his left that was haunting him. He put his hands over his ears, blood from the torn vein staining his fingers and smearing his bruised face, a low groan echoing from the base of his throat as he shook his head again. Foggy remembered his words just before the Dust stopped his heart: _everything’s so loud_.

“Matty,” he said softly, but Matt jerked away.

“It’s all dark.” He shook his head again, blinking.

“Oh, Matt,” Karen said softly, tears clear in her voice.

Licking her lips, Claire stepped forward, her movements slow and careful in the small space between them and where Matt was trying to make himself one with the wall. Foggy watched as she rubbed her palms along the outer edges of her sweats, then stepped close enough to Matt that she could reach out and touch him. She paused before resting her hand on his shoulder; Foggy didn’t blame her. He’d seen Matt in action: the man was dangerous, even when wounded.

 _Especially_ when wounded.

“Matt,” she said softly. “It’s Claire.”

“Claire?” His voice was wrecked, not even close to his normal timbre. He didn’t raise his head, but allowed her to rest her hands on his shoulders and draw closer. “It’s dark.”

“I know,” Claire said, huskily. “The world isn’t on fire, is it?”

Foggy felt the blood drain from his face once more, this time with realization. It wasn’t that Matt was confused about not being able to see; it was that his ‘sight’ had been turned off. The drugs were messing with his perception.

“No,” Matt whispered, the sound choked and anemic.

Claire slid her hand from Matt’s shoulder to his cheek and held it there for a moment. “We are here, Matt. You can’t see us like you usually do, but you can find us.”

“I can’t,” Matt said, jerking slightly as though ducking a hit. He moved his hands to the sides of his head, gripping his sweaty hair with his fingers. “And he won’t…he won’t stop…just _stop talking_.”

“Stick?” Claire asked.

“He wasn’t here a minute ago, but—“ Matt again ducked a sound heard only by him and this time his knees buckled.

Claire followed him down to the floor, kneeling in front of him. She looked over her shoulder at Foggy, questions clear in her eyes.

“I don’t know,” Foggy said helplessly, hands spread out to his sides. “All I got was a blind old man who taught him to fight.”

“Sister Angelica said he was a violent man,” Karen sniffed, wiping her eyes. “They brought him in to try to connect with Matt when he was like, ten, but she sounded like she’d been afraid of him.”

Claire muttered under her breath. “ _Hijo de puta_.”

“If you’re saying that’s bad, I agree,” Foggy replied.

“I need to get the fluid back into him,” Claire said. “Only way he’s going to beat this and have a chance to heal is to get those drugs out of his system.”

Foggy chewed his lip for a moment, then made a decision. He only wished it didn’t feel so much like he was stepping off a high dive and hoping there was water in the pool. Taking a breath, he moved forward, close to Claire, and spoke loud enough that Matt jerked in startled reaction.

“Hey, Stick!” Foggy barked. “How ‘bout you try snatching a pebble from my hand and leave my friend alone.”

“Are you seriously referencing _Kung Fu_ right now?” Claire muttered sotto voce.

Foggy frowned at her. “Work with what you know, right?”

Matt, however, had tipped his head toward the corner of the room he’d been cowering away from. Foggy pressed on.

“You’ve got no power here,” he practically bellowed. “He’s got a new family.”

For a long minute, no one moved. Then Claire scooted back slowly, as if afraid of breaking the hold of the moment, and grabbed new tubing and her last saline bag. Foggy crouched down where she’d been and faced off with Matt, wincing slightly at the tension in his friend’s frame, the way the bruises on his torso crunched up against themselves.

“Hey,” Foggy said softly, resting a hand on Matt’s forearm and gently pulling it away from his ears. “He’s not going to hurt you, Matty. I won’t let him.”

“Something’s wrong with me, Foggy,” Matt said, bowing his head so that his words were directed toward his knees. His skin was covered in sweat, a teardrop of perspiration bouncing down the tracks of stitches along his face. “It’s all…it’s burning. Everything. But I still can’t…it’s dark. I can’t f-find you.”

“It’s the drug, Matt,” Foggy told him, thinking about what Claire had said. Thinking about _Kung Fu_. “Try not to find us with, well, _your_ way of seeing.”

Matt shook his head and Foggy saw his chin tremble, the bruises there making the motion that much more tragic.

“Listen to me. I’m right here.” Foggy thought back to that awful day after Claire had sewn Matt back together, when Matt had told him everything. The whole truth, as much as he’d been able. “Listen for my heartbeat.”

Matt brought his chin up at that, tipping it sideways in the first recognizable motion he’d made since waking up with a scream on his lips. Sweat had tented his lashes, turning his battered face young. His blank eyes were resting somewhere to the left of Foggy’s shoulder as he concentrated.

“It’s too fast,” Matt said, but then he reached his bloody hand out tentatively and brushed his fingertips on the edge of Foggy’s hair, as if making sure what he sensed was truly there.

“Yeah, well, that’ll happen when your best friend scares the shit out of you.”

Matt swallowed. “Claire’s here.”

Foggy nodded, not thinking that Matt couldn’t sense the motion at the moment.

“I h-heard her…f-felt her hand.”

“Yeah, she’s here, too,” Foggy confirmed. “You can do this, Matty.”

Matt’s breathing grew slightly more rapid as he tipped his head again, clearly searching the room for sounds, smells, anything that gave him _real_ versus _not real_.

“Y-you’re wearing that perfume,” Matt said, his voice pitched upwards. “The same kind you wore that first night. I liked how it smelled.”

“Luckily,” Claire answered, a wry smile on her lips. “Since we also had the cologne-happy Russian to deal with.”

“Karen’s here,” Matt said, tilting his face in a different direction. “But…she’s c-crying.”

“I’m okay, Matt,” Karen replied.

Matt covered his face briefly, then dropped his arms so that his hands hung from his knees. “Where…where is _here_?”

“Uh, it’s like an alcove or something. At St. Pat’s,” Foggy replied.

“We’re at my church?” Matt asked, his face scrunched up in confusion. He shifted as though to put his legs beneath him but paused, catching his breath. He pressed a hand against his side where the needles had left puncture marks. “Ahh, damn,” he gasped. “Why does everything hurt so much?”

Foggy decided to let the language slip pass and rocked back on his heels, ready to help Matt stand when his friend decided he was able. “Probably because you beat up four guys and then got shot up by a shitload of Dust.”

Matt ducked his head again, reaching for the back of his neck and gripping the muscle there. He was trembling again, not quite as violently as before, but enough that Foggy noticed. Claire moved forward, the saline bag in her hand.

“Matt, I need to keep flushing that drug out of your system,” she said. “Can you let me do that?”

“I saw my dad,” Matt said, bringing all motion to a halt. “Like he was right here again. I saw him die, only I _couldn’t_ have…’cause I wasn’t there until after. And I…I couldn’t see him then, really. I could touch him, but not…. Somehow, I…I saw him. And h-he…he looked so sad.”

“It’s the drug,” Claire told him. “It triggers—“

“And I f-felt everything. The accident. Stick training me. Nobu’s blade. I thought they…,” he rubbed the back of his head. “I thought they were happening. Now. Again.”

Claire just nodded and Foggy saw pain echoed in her tense expression.

“I think,” Claire said, pausing to clear her throat. “I think you’re on the tail end of this thing. You’re with us, you’re talking.”

She drew closer and reached for his hand. Amazingly, he met her part way, gently grabbing her fingers, and arresting her movement. He moved his other hand directly to her face, cupping her cheek, then dropping it to rest on her shoulder. His movements were sure, steady. Almost as if….

“Matt?” Claire asked. “What do you see?”

Matt paused. Foggy lived four lifetimes in that pause.

“A world on fire,” Matt said, his voice a tangle of relief and regret.

Foggy felt Karen’s gaze on him and shook his head with a waved his fingers in a _tell you about it later_ gesture. He saw Claire offer Matt a tremulous smile, then run a gentle hand down the back of his head.

“You think you can get up? Get back over to the couch?”

“Yeah,” Matt nodded, allowing Claire and Foggy to reach for him and pull him carefully to his feet. Once there he wavered dangerously, Foggy’s arm the only thing that kept him from crashing face-first to the floor.

“Easy buddy,” Foggy grunted as he hefted Matt back to his feet and held him there until he seemed a bit steadier. “You’re moving like me after a night of tequila.”

“Can’t have that,” Matt murmured, not moving, still gripping Foggy’s shoulder like a lifeline. “You make some pretty bad choices on tequila.”

Foggy turned, sliding Matt’s arm across his shoulder and moved him forward, Claire hovering close, but not quite touching him. Karen moved toward the couch and pulled Matt’s ruined, sweat-soaked T-shirt away, laying Foggy’s softer, not-quite-soaked jacket down to protect Matt’s bare skin. As they reached the couch, Foggy bent and eased Matt to a seated position next to his jacket.

“In tequila’s defense,” Foggy teased as he shifted into a crouch in front of Matt, “I’ve also made some pretty questionable choices completely sober.”

For the first time in what seemed like forever, Matt laughed. It was a broken thing, fragile edges of sound tripping around the room and teasing the air between them, but it was still a laugh.

Until it shattered and collected into sobs.

Matt’s face fell, his lips folding down in an inverted bow, tears tracking the edges of bruises and his shoulders shaking with the effort. His fingers flinched and pulled at the seams of his jeans and his chest hitched with a desperate bid for air. The motion caught Foggy’s eye and his gaze landed on fresh reddish-purple bruising on the center of Matt’s chest where Claire had used all her force to bring him back.

That was Foggy’s undoing.

Ignoring the two women in the room who would probably have been better at the nurturing and comforting, he leaned forward and clasped the back of Matt’s neck, bringing him close enough their foreheads touched. Matt twitched, but didn’t pull away. Tears slipped down his face, dancing through the scruff on his chin, and falling to his knees.

“You’ve probably thought of that night a thousand times,” Foggy started, his voice soft, meant only for Matt even though he knew Claire and Karen could hear him. “Played it out, changed the angles, tried to figure out if you could have done something to stop it. Right?”

Matt simply nodded, his lips pressing closed over a low, pained moan.

“Matty, you were a kid. There was nothing you could do to save your dad, okay?”

Matt tried to pull away, but Foggy held him tight.

“And killing yourself to make this city a better place won’t bring him back.”

Foggy heard Karen clear the emotion from her throat behind him. Claire sank down on the couch next to Matt, an utterly exhausted sigh slipping from her parted lips. Matt tried to pull away again, this time with more effort and Foggy let him. He stayed crouched in front of him, but let his hand slide away, resting it on Matt’s knees and watched as his friend let his head drop back against the couch, working to bring his emotions under control.

Foggy couldn’t begin to think what it had been like for a ten-year-old blind kid, who’d only had his dad, to lose that lifeline, that connection to the world, and be thrust into a place where he’d been kept apart, kept alone, taught nothing but how to survive and fight. It was remarkable that the man had been able to actually function in society.

His outlet, his mission, while not remotely what Foggy wanted for his friend, was beginning to take on a recognizable shape. One that Foggy could begin to understand.

Claire picked up Matt’s bloody hand, cleaned it gently and wrapped a bandage around it. Then, not saying a word, she eased the new catheter into a vein on the inside of Matt’s arm, and opened the port to the last saline bag. Matt stayed sitting next to her, his head back against the couch, his eyes closed.

Foggy moved over to Karen and simply put his arms around her. It had been a pretty heavy night for her, all told. Leading her to the wall directly across from the couch, Foggy motioned for her to sit and then joined her, letting her lean her head on his shoulder. Claire met his eyes and he saw that she still held Matt’s fingers.

“At some point,” she said tiredly, “we really should all go home.”

“Not sure where that is,” Matt mumbled.

Foggy frowned; momentarily worried that Matt wasn’t tracking again, but then Claire smiled sadly and rested her head on Matt’s shoulder and Foggy decided it wasn’t the time to press the issue. He leaned his head to rest on top of Karen’s and closed his eyes.

That was the sight that met Father Lantom’s eyes when he returned to his rectory later that morning. Foggy roused from the doze he’d allowed himself to slip into when he heard the pocket door slide open. The priest looked odd dressed in street clothes, the bruise around his eye a stark contrast to his white hair and pale skin.

Father Lantom met his eyes and smiled, then he moved over to the couch where Claire was asleep with her head on Matt’s shoulder. Foggy was surprised to see that Matt’s eyes were open, but then he realized Matt had probably heard Father Lantom long before the man had opened the door to the prayer room.

“Matthew.”

“Father.”

Claire stirred at the sound of Matt’s voice, sitting up stiffly and yawning. Karen woke soon thereafter, all three staring up at Father Lantom with owlish expressions. They were all wan and exhausted, their wrinkled clothes looking like they’d rolled around in one of Hell’s Kitchen’s many back alleys. Foggy looked over at Matt and thought that, aside from the stitches and bruising—or, perhaps _because_ of them—he was the only one of them to look close to his normal self.

“The policeman who escorted me back here informed me that the man who escaped has not been found,” Father Lantom told Matt.

“Not surprising,” Matt sighed, still not moving. “He spent two decades fooling everyone into thinking he was a victim when he actually murdered his father.”

“You know this for sure?” Foggy asked, rubbing his shoulder where Karen’s head had caused it to go numb.

“He told me. Up on the roof.” Matt shrugged slightly. “Took me a bit to sort it out from…all the other stuff in my head.”

“He was counting on the Dust to kill you,” Foggy said, malice in his tone. “And it almost did.”

“Father Lantom,” Karen said, climbing to her feet. “What about Sister Angelica?”

Father Lantom looked down, his mouth pulled into a tight frown.

“She didn’t make it, did she?” Matt asked quietly.

“I’m afraid the drug was too much for her system,” Father Lantom told them.

Foggy looked over at Matt; though his friend hadn’t made a sound, something suddenly felt off about him. “Matt?”

Matt shook his head. “She…she was the first person I met at St. Agnes.”

“I’m sorry,” Claire said, laying her hand on his leg.

“When I was younger, I…,” he paused, brows pulling close. “I blamed her for…, well, everything.” He rolled his head on the back of the couch. “Almost everything.”

“You needed a focus for your pain, Matthew,” Father Lantom offered. “I think now that she knew before you did what you were capable of.”

The comfortable quiet of the room had congealed in the dim morning light that filtered into the room from the opened pocket door. Foggy could smell the coffee, sweat, and blood that soaked the air around them; and if _he_ could smell it….

“How about we blow this popsicle stand, huh?”

Claire stood with a groan. “It’s a good thing today’s my day off,” she yawned. “Don’t think I could handle another Dust patient right now.”

“Pretty soon,” Matt promised from his position on the couch, “you won’t have to.”

Claire turned to him. “If you think you’re going anywhere but home and to bed, you’re insane.”

Matt said nothing.

“Dammit, I’m serious, Matt,” Claire snapped. “You’re severely bruised. You’ve definitely got a concussion. And I’ll bet you a million dollars—payable right now—you are hearing some old ships in your chest.”

“Uh…old ships?” Foggy asked.

“Couple of cracked ribs,” Matt allowed. “I’ll be okay.”

“Oh, so you beat the Dust and now you’ll just meditate your way out of this?” Claire’s tone was incredulous. “Don’t suppose it matters that you died last night.”

Matt blinked, his head lifting slightly from the couch. “What?”

“You wanna know why your chest hurts so badly?” Claire continued, shoving her loose sleeves up past her elbow as she worked herself up. “Because Karen and I gave you CPR.”

Matt swallowed, apparently believing her when neither Foggy nor Karen spoke up to counter her statement.

“I didn’t…I didn’t know.”

Claire took a breath, then glanced almost apologetically at Father Lantom before looking back at Matt. “You need rest to heal. And you need to stay off the street until this bastard is found. Because he knows you, Matt.”

“He knows Matt Murdock,” Matt said. “But there’s a side of me he doesn’t know.”

“That side,” Karen spoke up suddenly, stepping forward until Foggy imagined she was burning hot and bright in Matt’s perception, “needs to let Matt Murdock heal. Because I didn’t bring my friend back to life just to have Daredevil kill him.”

Matt held completely still for a moment, then slowly nodded. Foggy exhaled, thankful for the badass women in his life keeping his best friend in check.

“Okay, so we’re in agreement,” he said, clapping his hands together. “You’re on lockdown for at least—“

“Forty-eight hours,” Claire broke in.

“Forty-eight hours,” Foggy echoed. “Perfect opportunity for me to catch you up on your movie trivia.”

“There is something else,” Father Lantom broke in before anyone else could move.

“There usually is,” Matt said on a tired sigh.

“My vows forbid me to reveal the nature in which I came by this information,” Lantom said, shifting and clasping his hands behind his back as though he were at parade rest. “But they don’t say much about you guessing correctly.”

“What is it, Father?” Matt asked, showing the first sign that he might not be actually growing roots on Father Lantom’s couch.

“In your research, did you come across Bobby Henley’s mother’s name?”

Foggy frowned. “Uh, Rita, wasn’t it?”

Father Lantom pressed his lips together, looking at the floor. “Her name was Margherita Messala.”

Foggy felt his teeth click together and he looked over at Matt, watching as the muscle along Matt’s jaw bounced like a living thing. Without a word, Matt tightened his abs and shifted forward, a sharp gasp of pain halting him part-way there. Foggy reached out, Claire lifted her hands, but Father Lantom was closer and swifter.

He all but collected Matt up against him, pulling the younger man to his feet and holding him there, careful of the bruising that stared them all in the face. Matt didn’t even pretend to look in the priest’s direction. There was something in his expression—shame? Disappointment? Sorrow?

“I’m sorry, Father,” Matt said quietly. “I should have kept you out of this.”

“You didn’t bring this to my door, Matthew. It was here, waiting for you.”

“I couldn’t…I couldn’t keep you safe,” Matt whispered.

Father Lantom shifted his grip until Matt was standing directly in front of him, still supported by the priest’s strong hands. “I’m standing here, alive, because of you.”

Matt swallowed. Foggy exchanged looks with Claire and Karen as they waited to see Matt’s reaction. Matt nodded, but in that motion expressed only resignation, not acceptance. Foggy let his shoulder’s drop and saw Father Lantom’s frown deepen.

“Foggy,” Matt said, pulling stiffly from the priest’s hands. “We’ve got work to do.”

“Hey, we just agreed—“

“Lawyer work,” Matt amended. “I can do lawyer work on lockdown.”

“At your apartment,” Karen stipulated.

“From your couch,” Claire added.

Matt nodded tiredly.

“It’s good to finally meet Matthew’s family,” Father Lantom smiled, his eyes hitting each one of them in turn.

Foggy smiled and saw Karen blink in surprise and Claire cover her mouth in a gesture he was beginning to recognize as overwhelmed. She turned and grabbed Matt’s now-dry coat, stepping close to him and carefully easing his arms in the sleeves, zipping it closed over his bare chest. Foggy and Karen donned their own coats and Foggy smirked when he realized that his smelled like Matt.

Matt started to head out of the small prayer room, pausing at the alcove where the cooler air waited for them. He took a slow breath, an arm still wrapped around his middle, and lifted his chin toward the stairs, as if playing through the previous night’s events. As he moved forward once more in a stiff-backed, stuttering stride, Foggy and the others trailing after him, he called back over his shoulder.

“Karen, when this is all over, you have to tell us how you got to be so good with a gun.”

Foggy jerked to a halt, looking over at Karen who stared back, pale faced. “How the hell did you know it was Karen?”

Matt kept walking, almost as though he knew if he stopped, he wouldn’t be able to start again. “I can smell the gunpowder on her hands.”

Claire huffed out a small laugh, moving past the shocked Karen and Foggy to catch up with Matt. “Guess he’s done keeping things a secret.”

“Come on,” Foggy nudged Karen into moving, catching the reassuring hand Father Lantom placed on her shoulder.

“You have nothing to fear from Matthew,” Father Lantom said to Karen, “or from the law. The man did not die.”

“Thanks, Father,” Karen replied, her voice shaking slightly.

“Should you ever need a place to talk, I have a mean espresso machine in the basement,” Father Lantom patted Karen’s shoulder, “and my door is always open.”

Karen’s eyes were wet but, her smile steady as she nodded her thanks. She followed Matt and Claire and Foggy exchange a look with Father Lantom in her wake. The man offered Foggy an enigmatic smile and then turned back toward his prayer room. Rubbing his face, Foggy dragged his tired body after his friends.

“Really pretty sure the universe just shifted sideways,” he mumbled to himself, then as the big main doors created open, he added at the same decibel, “You hear me, Murdock?”

He didn’t know whether to feel relief or trepidation when Matt called back, “Yes.”


	9. Matt

**

**Matt**

He didn’t recall much of the trip back to his apartment. He’d taken beatings before, many worse than this, but his senses weren’t bouncing back from being nearly annihilated by the Dust. He knew that Karen left them to go home for a bit and that Foggy was still near, but the next moment he truly registered from the time they left St. Patrick’s was standing in his bathroom, the shower on and filling the room with steam, Claire sitting on the counter in front of him, eye-level.

“Hey, you back with me?”

“Yeah, how…?” He shook his head. He didn’t want to know. There was too much of this moment to process in any case. “Never mind.”

“You need real sleep, Matt,” Claire told him. “We don’t know enough about that drug to know what the lingering effects are.”

“Think it’s pretty safe to say it affects memory,” Matt muttered, tugging his pants off and moving toward the shower.

He didn’t really register that he’d just stripped naked in front of Claire until he realized the sound he was hearing was her rapid heartbeat. He stifled his groan of embarrassment by ducking his head beneath the spray of the water, not caring at the moment if he got the stitches wet.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice echoing off the tiles. “I didn’t mean—“

“It’s okay,” Claire said, a chuckle in her tone. “I’m just here to make sure you don’t fall over. Foggy offered, but he’s cooked. Not quite as used to pulling all-nighters with wounded friends, I guess.”

“Thank you, Claire,” Matt said, pouring every ounce of genuine emotion he felt into the words. “I mean that.”

“I know you do,” Claire replied softly. After a moment, she spoke up again, “They are your family, you know. We… _we_ are your family.”

Matt didn’t reply; he rotated under the water, letting the warmth sluice out the chills that still seemed to permeate his muscles. When he was clean, he pulled back the curtain and felt around for the towel he knew was hanging nearby, wrapping it around himself before stepping out. Claire let him alone to change into a clean pair of sweats, but stopped him before he put the T-shirt on.

“Need to check the stitches again first,” she said.

He made his way to his bedroom, moving like an ancient man, and lay back on his bed with a groan. Claire’s hands moved with quick precision over him, re-wrapping his bruised chest and cracked ribs, then helped him put his shirt on before he lay back again. He knew she’d left pain meds and water next his bed without her having to tell him.

“I’m going to leave, but Foggy said he’d stay,” she told him. “Something about Netflix.”

He heard her shrug, pulling in every nuance of her motion. The way her reluctant smile stretched across her tired face, the way she unconsciously rubbed her hands against her legs, the steady beat of her heart, the smell of her skin, the click of her teeth as she talked. He wanted to drink her in, her presence the hope that he wasn’t destined for just one outcome, that there was a chance for him to perhaps one day be simply _Matt_.

That the Devil wouldn’t be his end.

“Get some rest,” Matt told her. “You were amazing, you know.”

“ _I_ know,” Claire grinned. “But how do _you_ know? You were out of it the whole time.”

“Not the whole time.” Matt’s smile was tired. “I remember your voice. Your hands. I remember…climbing out of a black hole and knowing you stood at the top.”

Claire’s breath hitched, but she said nothing. She stood up from her perch on the bed and Matt reached out to grab her hand.

“Wait.”

She waited; he felt her gaze heavy on him as he searched for the words, feeling very keenly that this couldn’t wait, shouldn’t wait.

“What you said about family….”

“It’s true, Matt,” she replied.

“I’ve…I’ve just…,” he struggled, mentally pushing the words off the ledge of resistance and into her path. “I don’t have anything of my own, not like that. Not since my dad.”

“Well, if you want it, you do now.”

“Family makes you weak, vulnerable,” Matt challenged.

“Family gives you strength. A purpose,” Claire countered.

“What if I can’t protect you?” Matt asked, his grip on Claire’s wrist tightening. “What if I don’t…hear you?”

Claire sighed. “Family is supposed to protect each other,” she told him, leaning close and stroking his hair back from his forehead. “It’s not all on you.” She kissed the crown of his head and he reached up quickly to cup her cheek, keeping her from moving away. “Matt,” she warned softly.

“I know,” he acknowledged, yet unable to let her go.

Claire tipped her face until their foreheads were touching. He felt her breath across his lips, the heat of her skin, the beat of her pulse beneath his fingertips. He didn’t move, despite every nerve ending in his body begging him to pull her into his embrace and keep her there. After a moment, Claire took a breath, pressed her lips gently, but quickly to his, searing him with that touch, then pulled up and away.

“I told Foggy to call me if you needed me,” she said from his doorway.

“You’ll answer?”

He heard the sadness in her smile, the way it folded instead of stretched. “I told you, Matt. I’ll always be here if you need me.”

When she left, Matt listened, heard Foggy heading for the shower, heard his neighbor moving around her living room, heard the life on the street outside, and shut it all away. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this tired. It felt deeper than just post-battle weariness. Just aches and bruises and split skin.

It felt as though his heart was weary. His soul. Everything that made him whoever he was, _what_ ever he was, simply wanted nothing more than to just lay back and allow oblivion to take over. At one point he was marginally aware that Foggy entered the room. His friend was trying to be quiet, he knew, but there was no way to stifle a heartbeat. Breath pattern. The smell of skin.

“Matty?” Foggy whispered, standing at the edge of his bed.

Matt held still, curled to his side around a pillow, easing the pressure on his ribs, his face half buried by another pillow. His apartment was cool, but he was still sweating out the Dust and imagined he’d probably be doing so for quite some time. The loose sweat pants he’d pulled on after the shower had bunched up around his calves when he’d rolled over, but he was beyond caring about that minor discomfort.

He simply wanted sleep.

“Your socks are here if you want them later,” Foggy said, apparently not buying his sleep act. He was going to have to work on that one. “I’ll be out in the other room. Karen’s bringing over our files in a bit.”

Matt simply exhaled and waited. Soon enough, Foggy slipped out of the room and slid the door shut behind him. Matt stopped listening for Karen to arrive. He stopped listening for the cries of the city. Little by little, the tense muscles along his back and torso began to relax, and his breath eased.

He lost the moment when he actually fell to sleep.

The strange thing about dreaming without sight was that he dreamt in an odd combination of memory and sensation. He remembered what things looked like—grass, cars, snow, brick, forks, faucets, a tie, a couch, shoe laces, toothbrush—but when he wasn’t focused on perception and forming a picture through his unique manner of seeing, the images became distorted by texture, scent, taste. They turned into what he remembered cartoons appearing like when he was a child.

The problem was, dreaming while coming down off of Dust was a bit like dropping acid and listening to _Dark Side of the Moon_. Or so he imagined. Memories flooded his subconscious, sending him spinning down a strange path of stretching colors and distorted sounds until he was standing in a boxing ring with a sea of red surrounding him. The color churned, his senses tripping on themselves to maintain balance.

“You heard me win, didn’tcha?”

Matt turned at the words. It didn’t sound like a voice. In fact, it sounded like the bell was ringing out syllables. He tried to reply, but couldn’t open his mouth. Reaching up, he felt the prick of stitches sealing his lips.

“Wanted you to hear me win, just once.”

_I heard_ , Matt tried to yell. _I heard, Dad._

“Didn’t want to leave ya, kiddo. Didn’t have a choice.”

Matt tried to turn again, but his feet felt suddenly stuck. He looked down but found even his bizarre perception was failing him. The canvas surface of the ring was melting, covering his feet and holding him in place.

“Hell, _I_ wanted to leave.”

This time it wasn’t the bell. This time the ropes were snapping at him. A different voice. With different intent.

“Couldn’t get away fast enough.”

_You tried to kill me_ , Matt accused. His hurt and anger toward Stick bubbled up until he wanted to reach in and rip it from his chest. _You didn’t care what happened to me._

“Kid, in a war people die. If it’s not you, it’s the guy next to you. And I wasn’t gonna be standing next to you.”

Matt bent, trying to free his feet when he suddenly felt the nylon touch of the rope casings on his skin, wrapping around him like boa constrictors and holding him tight.

“You have the Devil in you, child.”

Not the ropes talking any longer. They were too busy trying to squeeze him to death. This time, it was the air. Superheated and heavy, it staggered around him until the words bruised his skin and made his eyes burn.

“You must repent. Ask the Lord for mercy. We all must pay our dues.”

_I’ve paid a childhood of dues._

He wanted to find Sister Angelica, to force her to look at him, confront her fear of him as she never would in his youth.

“You will always be alone.”

He couldn’t argue with her there. Not only because she wasn’t wrong, but because the melting canvas mat was pulling him down and the ropes were binding him tighter, squeezing until he couldn’t breathe. He tried desperately to open his mouth and pull in air, scream, cry out, _anything_ , but his lips were stitched closed. Tears streamed from his burning eyes and he knew without a doubt that this was it: this was how he met his end.

“Jesus, Matt, c’mon!”

This time it was a _voice_. A very real voice. A very scared voice.

“Wake up!”

The next thing he knew, Matt was gulping air as though he were surfacing. He was sitting up in his bed, his sheets drenched in sweat, his body shivering, his hands fisted in something thick and soft. He couldn’t stop opening his mouth, his jaw cracking from tension.

“That’s it, you’re okay.”

Foggy. It was Foggy’s voice. It was Foggy’s shirt his hands were currently gripping.

“’m…sorry, I’m s-sorry,” Matt gasped, not quite able to uncurl his fingers.

Foggy put his hands over Matt’s and gently pried his grip loose. Matt felt his hands tremble in Foggy’s and allowed his friend to hold them a minute longer than he might have otherwise. He couldn’t seem to get his breathing to calm down.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Foggy said, not moving. Matt could hear his friend’s heart beat thundering almost in time with his own. “Claire said this would probably happen for a while as the drug worked out of your system.”

“Fantastic,” Matt muttered, trying to wet is parched lips with an equally dry tongue.

“She left some stuff for you,” Foggy told him, “but you were out too fast this morning for me to give it to you.”

“This morning?” Matt said, pulling away from Foggy with a low groan, his body quick to remind him that all was not sunshine and roses.

“Yeah, buddy,” Foggy huffed, shifting into a more comfortable position on the edge of Matt’s bed. “It’s like eight. At night. You’ve been asleep for almost nine hours.”

Matt could smell water nearby and took a chance, fumbling slightly until his fingers found the glass someone had left on his nightstand. He downed the whole thing before taking another breath. Foggy waited until Matt was marginally calm before talking again.

“You want me to do the whole _do you want to talk about it_ thing, or would you rather act like you didn’t just have an F5 nightmare and move on to the case?”

Matt chuffed. No one else got him quite like Foggy. “Case.”

“Well, you remember me saying Karen was bringing over our files, right?”

Off of Matt’s tilted chin Foggy went on. “She’s not here. Went home a couple of hours ago to get some sleep. She checked on you a few times. Think she’s a little rattled that you knew she shot that guy.”

“She saved my life.”

“Yeah, well, something’s definitely off there.”

Matt adjusted until his back was against his headboard. The sweat was beginning to cool and become sticky and uncomfortable. Foggy as right; they were definitely going to have to discuss Karen when all of this was over.

“Anyway, so…turns out Bobby’s mom was Tito Messala’s sister. And Tito is—“

“Sal’s brother,” Matt completed.

“Right, and according to Brett Mahoney, you—er, well, Daredevil—just hauled Sal’s son and his…associates…into the precinct this week. Along with a shit-load of Dust.”

“Swell,” Matt sighed, rotating his legs over to the side of the bed so that he sat next to Foggy, aching body propped up by trembling arms.

He hadn’t quite acknowledged the headache that had been lingering at the base of his skull where tender skin reminded him one of Bobby Henley’s men had tried to pulverize his head into the church rooftop, but now that he was sitting up, the throbbing returned with a vengeance. He felt Foggy tense up, felt his heavy gaze, but ignored it.

“Yeah,” Foggy agreed cautiously. “Once Father Lantom told us that connection, a lotta pieces just started falling into place.”

“Wonder how long she knew,” Matt mused.

“No clue,” Foggy replied. “We can’t talk to Sister Elisa, yet. All we got is the name, a family tree with some twisted roots, and a ton of guesses.”

“Enough to hand over to Brett?”

“Hell, yeah,” Foggy replied. “Kinda hoping this is our only defense case where we actively help put our client behind bars.”

Matt chuckled appreciatively.

“You look like shit,” Foggy said conversationally.

“Yeah?” Matt replied. “Well, I feel fantastic.”

“Uh-huh. How about you take a shower and I’ll get us some food.”

Matt made his way to the shower, hoping the hot water would erase the dregs of his dream. As he lifted his face to the spray, he found himself thinking about the years at St. Agnes. The torture of hearing so many voices, being aware of so many bodies so nearby, but not being close to any of them. He tried to remember Bobby Henley, but all he could recall was that nauseating scent of lemon cleaner. It was the tag his brain had put on that name from his childhood.

As Matt emerged, dressed once more in sweats, socks covering his now-cold feet and a soft hoodie hiding the wounds on his torso, he realized immediately that Foggy had endeavored to shift the mood. One of the first things Matt noticed as he stepped out into the living room were the scent of clean sheets on his bed, the smell of Thai food in the kitchen, and the whir of a laptop cooling pad.

“You don’t have to do all of this, Foggy,” Matt said, standing completely still in the center of the room.

“All of what?” Foggy asked, genuinely puzzled.

“This…taking care of me. This is more than…,” he rubbed the back of his head, struggling for the way to balance embarrassment and overwhelmed with gratitude and relief. “This is more than a friend should have to do.”

He heard Foggy’s eyebrows lift, the skin along his hairline stretching. “Is this your way of telling me not to call you for help next time I’m sick?”

“No, that’s not…,” Matt dropped his hand and fumbled with the zipper on his hoodie. “Not what I meant.”

“Look.” Matt heard the hollow _clunk_ of an empty beer bottle hit the kitchen counter. “I get it. I do. You grew up alone, had to do things for yourself. You’re not used to depending on people, asking for help.”

While every word was true, Matt wanted to curl in on himself as he listened.

“But here’s the thing… _you don’t have to_. Not anymore.” Foggy moved around the counter and stood at the end of the couch, not closing the distance further as though sensing correctly that Matt felt cornered. “That’s the awesome thing about having friends, Matty. You don’t _have to_ do this on your own.”

Matt pressed his lips flat, nodded just to stop Foggy from saying more words. He felt them edge out in the air between them—heavy and dark, with reverberations and echoes of their own. He wanted to duck away from them before they stuck him. Before their impact could shatter the shell of control he’d worked so hard to construct around himself.

“I know what you’re thinking, Murdock,” Foggy continued. “You forget I lived with you for four years. You learn a lot about someone in that time, even without being able to hear their heartbeat.”

Matt swallowed and brought his chin up, his arms moving to wrap around his mid-section in a gesture of protection born of pure instinct. He knew Foggy wouldn’t hurt him, but the world suddenly seemed to yawn wide, tipping him dangerously over a jagged-edged precipice that would cut him apart until he shattered the moment he reached the bottom.

“You’re thinking _what if I can’t protect them?_ ”

His breath started coming in rapid bursts; he fought to wrestle it under control, but Foggy’s words penetrated his protective shell and struck him like heat-seeking missiles, each one finding a core of truth. He sensed Foggy step closer, caught the movement of the air as his friend spread his arms away from his sides, his hands open. Matt wanted to retreat but he knew that there was nowhere he could go.

“Look,you are no more responsible for my safety than I am for yours,” Foggy declared. “And I know I was an asshole back in the hospital. I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have said what I did about you not hearing Karen.”

Matt couldn’t suppress a flinch at those words.

“But if you tell me that I can’t stop you from running the rooftops every night or putting the beat-down on guys twice your size—guys with _weapons_ , by the way—then I’m telling you that you can’t stop me from helping you after the fact or worrying about you during.”

“Foggy, I—“

“Nope!” Foggy raised his hands, still an arm’s length away from Matt. “Not gonna hear it, buddy. This is the way it’s gonna be. Only way you get rid of us is if you move outta Hell’s Kitchen. Pretty sure that ain’t gonna happen.”

Matt pulled the side of his mouth up in a rueful grip. “No, probably not.”

“So, we good?”

Matt was silent for a moment. He could agree now and hopefully satisfy Foggy, even though he didn’t believe the words in his heart. Or he could be honest.

“I don’t know,” Matt admitted. He heard Foggy’s quick intake of air. “I want that, but….” He shook his head. “It’s been the other way for so long, I just….”

“Hey, change isn’t easy, I know. I come from people who lead the revolution against change,” Foggy said, tapping the air. Matt felt it echo between them, bounce off his ears like a pat on the head. “I mean, you know my mom still sends me aprons and knife sharpeners for Christmas, right?”

Matt couldn’t suppress his quick smile.

“I’m just telling you that…well, when you fall? You’ve got someplace to land.” Foggy stepped forward again until Matt could reach out and touch him if he dared. He heard his friend hide his hands in his pockets, resisting the urge to hug, as Matt knew Foggy was dying to do. “You’ve got a home.”

Not trusting his voice, Matt nodded, his mouth reshaping from tension to acceptance, smiling back at Foggy.

“Okay, so. I say since our client is a homicidal maniac, the only thing left for us to do is eat and watch movies.”

Matt’s grin widened. “What movie? _Star Wars_?”

“Oh, no,” Foggy turned away from him, his voice carrying back to the living room. “You’re not healed enough for _Star Wars_. Tonight is a special selection. You’ll appreciate it. Promise.”

Matt eased himself down onto the couch, grunting slightly as his bruises hissed at the contact. He allowed Foggy to hand him his food and listened as his friend cued up the move on his laptop, chuckling as he realized it was _The_ _Usual Suspects_. Half-way through the movie, with the food cleaned up, Foggy grabbed him a blanket from his bed without his having to ask. As the reveal of Keyser Soze caught the movie’s police by surprise, Matt’s body fought sleep valiantly, and he sank lower onto the arm of the couch, his bent legs pressed up against Foggy’s side.

He grinned as Foggy quoted along with the movie, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

When Foggy clapped him on the knee, he nodded in silent agreement.

“Good choice,” he commended his friend when the movie ended. “The irony was not lost on me.”

“Right?” Foggy laughed. “Karen looked at me like I was ten kinds of crazy.”

Matt hummed a non-committal reply and sensed Foggy step away. When he returned he held something in his hand.

“You need to take this. Claire’s instructions. Something about concussion pain and old ships. I don’t even know.”

Matt didn’t have the energy to ask what it was or fight it. He complied, letting his aching head drop back on the armrest.

“You leaving?” he asked drowsily.

“Just for a bit,” Foggy told him. “Karen has the night shift.”

“You guys don’t have to—“

“Eh! Shut it.”

Matt sighed, giving in.

“I’m just going to run by the office and get a couple things ready to drop off at the precinct in the morning, then grab a few hour’s shut-eye. I’ll be back.” He stretched out the last three words as though he were speaking with his tongue stuck to the back of his throat.

Matt said nothing.

“C’mon, Ahnold? _Terminator_? Nothing?”

“Your Schwarzenegger impression is worse than your Balboa,” Matt teased, eyes closed, sleepy grin in place.

“Says you,” Foggy huffed good-naturedly before heading to the door to let Karen in.

Matt heard their voices lowered in the front hall, passing on instructions, asking questions, typical shift change. He smelled the apples-and-cinnamon warmth that was Karen as his blanket was pulled up over his shoulder and a gentle kiss was placed on his temple. He kept her in his perception for a bit longer, enough to know that she went to the kitchen, then curled up in one of the chairs across from him. He heard the subtle hum of electricity and suspected she was reading on her tablet. With nothing else to keep him engaged, Matt slipped into a blessedly dreamless sleep—no doubt courtesy of Claire’s drugs.

When he woke, it was cold. He could tell by the air that it was early morning; there was a certain stillness to dawn that only those who had stood in the night and felt the world change around them with the day would notice.

Karen had given up her vigil and was stretched out on Matt’s bed, atop the covers. He could smell snow coating his windows, plastering the morning with silence. It took him nearly a full minute to determine what woke him.

Something was wrong.

He could _hear_ it. As clearly as he _hadn’t_ heard Karen being attacked. It wasn’t a call for help; it was a footstep. A heartbeat. The smell of lemon cleaner.

He sat up with a gasp as his world pulled into startling focus, the noise around him painting a picture. Untangling himself from the blanket, he pushed stiffly to his feet, trying in vain to bite-back a groan.

“Matt?” Karen called sleepily from the bedroom. “You okay?”

“Karen,” he kept his voice low and authoritative, trying not to scare her. “I need you to call the police.”

“What? Why? Are you actually awake?” She was sitting up now, shoving her hair back from her face.

“There’s someone on the roof and they’re working their way down to my apartment.”

“How the hell—y’know what, never mind.” She got up from the bed and he heard the nightstand rattle when she bumped into it in the dark. “What are you doing?”

“Getting my shoes.”

At this, her heart rate skyrocketed. “You’re not going up there.”

Finding his running shoes, he turned and faced her, taking a slow breath and willing her to be calm. “He’s coming here for me. He may have already gotten Foggy.”

“Wait, Foggy? He’s okay, he went back to the—“

At this, Matt reached out and grabbed her arm, holding her steady. He didn’t have time for this. “The guy up there wants us dead. He’s not going to be subtle about it this time.”

“Jesus,” Karen breathed. “Fine, but I’m calling Claire.”

“Claire?” At that Matt brought his head up, chin tilted in confusion.

“If you’re doing what I think you’re doing, you’re going to need her.”

Matt didn’t bother arguing the point. It took far too much concentration to simply tie his shoes without groaning in pain. He left Karen calling the police and went to his trunk, grabbing his manrikigusari, then headed up the stairs to his roof access, calling over his shoulder, “Stay here.”

“Like hell,” Karen shot back, and he heard the _shink_ of a knife leaving the butcher block on his kitchen counter.

When Matt reached the rooftop door he slipped through and locked it behind him. He heard her pounding on the wood with the flat of her hand, screaming at him and throwing curses with impressive familiarity. It wouldn’t take her long to break the lock, but it would still buy him some time without having to worry about covering her.

The moment he reached the roof through the small alcove at the top of his stair access, he was slapped with the cold. It was all-encompassing, the snow that had coated his windows cloaking the world in muted sounds and disjointed, disorienting impressions. He stood, breathing in the frigid air, his wounded chest whimpering at the back of his mind. Pulling the clubs apart, he braced himself against the wind, holding them in a tight grip at his sides, and forced himself to focus.

Forced himself to _use_ the storm.

The wind banked around a figure, forming a shape in Matt’s mind. It twisted and sang at the presence of a blade, and stuttered at the staggered movements as the figure advanced through the wind. Filling in the blanks of his perception, Matt determined he hadn’t been spotted yet.

“Bobby Henley!” He called out across the storm.

“Blind Matt Murdock,” Bobby called back, confirming Matt’s guess. “Speak of the devil!” Matt forced himself not to react. “You saved me a trip.”

“Surrender,” Matt ordered.

“Nah, don’t think I’m going to do that,” Bobby shouted. “See, you didn’t play by the rules.” He moved closer and the heat of his body cut through the swirling snow, reaching out to Matt and honing his accuracy. “You were supposed to be nobodies. Patsies. I mean, whoever heard of a blind lawyer anyway?”

“Wilson Fisk,” Matt spat at him.

“You were just this freak back at St. Agnes. Hidden away, never talked to nobody,” Bobby continued. “No way you knew my family. No way.”

“I still didn’t,” Matt told him. He felt his hands going numb, the snow slapping his freezing cheeks. “Not until Sister Angelica.”

“Yeah, that bitch,” Bobby spat. “My cousin Sophia decides outta the blue to visit. Says she felt guilty for leaving me there all by my lonesome all this time, messed up like I was. Sister Angelica hears us talking, realizes who Sophie is and decides to dig up the past. Shoulda left it alone!”

“You didn’t,” Matt pointed out. “ _You_ opened up this can of worms.”

Bobby tightened his grip on the knife, bringing it up into an attack position. Matt recognized the motion; the man knew how to use a knife. Where or how he’d learned that living in St. Agnes, Matt had no idea. But if he had any hope of besting the man, he needed Bobby to come a little closer of his own accord.

“If we had any chance of getting the Messala family back on top where we were before those damn Russians moved in, I had to engage. But between that asshat in red handing my cousins over to the cops and ol’ Tosky up and deciding to have a conscience, I had to change things up a bit.”

“Kill a few people,” Matt said, maneuvering a bit to the side. “Always good for business.”

“Depends on the kind of business you’re in, friend,” Bobby smirked.

“Bobby,” Matt said, dropping his voice a bit. He didn’t miss the way the man facing him tensed. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Bobby barked a laugh. “You trying to scare me, Murdock? You forget I saw you screaming in your room when you was a kid, all freaked out.”

“I didn’t forget,” Matt said, then smiled.

Before Bobby could move, Matt swung one of his billy clubs in a rough side arch and clipped Bobby on the ear. It worked exactly as it was meant to and Bobby jerked the knife off balance from his attack position. Matt moved in, swirling the clubs exactly as Stick had taught him, catching Bobby on the upper arm, the wrist, the back of the knee.

_In a war people die…if it’s not you, it’s the guy next to you._

Bobby recovered and slashed out with his knife. Matt wasn’t able to dodge completely and felt the blade slide across the chilled skin of his bicep. He shifted and brought his elbow down at the small of Bobby’s back, going to his knees as Bobby retaliated with a slam to the bruised back of his skull.

_It’s not how you hit the mat; it’s how you get back up._

Flipping his body until he was once more balanced on his feet, Matt advanced, swinging the clubs with vicious force, ensuring they made contact. Bobby sliced once more with the knife and Matt pulled away, but then Bobby caught him with a damaging punch to his cracked ribs and Matt felt the air vacate his body. His right hand was numb, the club falling loose and rolling away.

Matt tried to swing his left club but Bobby had discovered a weakness and moved in, pummeling his bruised body with ugly blows. Matt went to his knees and Bobby wrenched the remaining billy club from his grip, standing behind him and pressing it solidly against Matt’s throat, effectively cutting off his air.

For a moment, his senses scrambled, unable to narrow in on any one thing, but as he fought for breath, clarity descended. He heard the police arriving at his apartment building. Heard Karen shouting his name as she pounded the upper door. Heard the frantic hammering of Bobby’s heart.

And the world slowed.

_You have the Devil in you, child_.

With an audible, throat-searing roar that came from a fire burning inside of him since he was young, Matt shoved to his feet, startling Bobby Henley’s grip loose. With every last ounce of his remaining strength, Matt pushed backwards, slamming both of them to the ground, Bobby beneath him. His ribs screamed at him, his lungs desperate for air but freezing on what was available. Matt rolled limply to the side, trying to order his battered body to rise, to fight on.

He was spent. His muscles quaked, refusing to hold him. His feet were buried in a snow drift, his arms tangled by his wet hoodie, his weapons missing, his head swimming. After all his battling, he couldn’t believe this was it.

The shout came from the rooftop access, loud and full of curses. Matt flinched away as the harsh winter wind shifted, warning him of an attack. Only it wasn’t directed at him. Something whistled through the air with the speed of a home-run hitter and Matt sensed the moment it struck Bobby Henley across the head, felling him.

“Matt?” Foggy was next to him. Somehow, impossibly, he was suddenly there.

“Foggy?” Matt rasped. There was something wrong with his voice, but he couldn’t seem to rally his energy enough to figure out what it was.

“I can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I?” Foggy gently grasped his arm, then tucked another beneath his chest, easing him to his feet.

Matt swallowed, realizing that he was swaying and shivering, his sweats soaked through. “How?”

Foggy wrapped arm around his shoulders, warm, solid, _there_. “I heard you.”

“Y-you…what?”

“I beat the cops by like five minutes,” he said. “I heard you shout. What was that, like, your Daredevil war cry?”

Matt huffed a helpless laugh. “Maybe.”

Someone had heard him. Cry for help. Someone had heard _him_.

“Would you two get in here?” Karen shouted from the doorway.

Matt was suddenly aware that not only was she standing in the alcove, but that the police were moving from his apartment around to the roof by means of the general entrance.

“My clubs,” he muttered, starting to bend and find them. The world tilted crazily and he groaned, thankful for Foggy’s strong arm.

“I got ‘em. Just don’t trip over my bat.”

At that, Matt laughed, helplessly. A tiny bit of hysteria tinging the edges of sound. “You used a bat?”

“Hey, I was the Pete Rose of my high school baseball team, buddy.” Foggy tucked him inside the alcove, out of the wind. “Y’know, without the crippling gambling debt.”

“Right.”

As the officers rounded up Bobby Henley, they stood side by side, Karen having brought both of them a blanket. As they were questioned, Foggy offered a plausible statement of what had transpired—one which Karen wisely backed up, despite having not witnessed a thing—while Matt mostly nodded, feeling himself grow weaker by the minute. He sent a silent _thank you_ to Karen when they were able to avoid an EMT call by Claire showing up.

Matt allowed Foggy to manhandle him back to his apartment, and obediently changed from his wet sweats to dry clothes. He sat stoically on the couch, trying not to shiver as they wrapped him in blankets. Claire cleaned and bandaged his new wounds, not wasting this opportunity to give him a piece of her mind.

“You couldn’t have waited ten minutes for the police?”

Matt winced as she cleaned the knife slice on his arm, grateful that it was too shallow to require stitches. “He would have been in here by then. And Karen was here.”

“I can take care of myself, Matt,” Karen spoke up.

“You shouldn’t…shouldn’t have to,” Matt replied, feeling as though his lips were oddly removed from his face, forming words of their own accord. “’s my job—“

“No,” Foggy shook his head so emphatically Matt heard it. “Not your job.” He sat on the chair across from the couch. “I will say this, though. You kicked some serious ass up there.”

“How long were you…?”

“Long enough to know that Stick guy knew his stuff, if he taught you all of that.”

Matt allowed a small smile. “Yeah.”

“You didn’t even seem to notice the snow,” Foggy continued as Claire eased Matt forward and peeled off the blankets, taping his bruised ribs. Matt knew his friend was trying to distract him from the pain, but he was pretty sure a bomb could go off beside him and he’d still feel this ache.

“I noticed it,” Matt replied tightly.

“Easy,” Claire said softly. “Just breathe. I’m almost done.”

“I’m just saying, it was impressive,” Foggy finished, flopping back against the chair.

“You saved me, Foggy,” Matt told him, his voice rumbling up from the bruises on his chest. “Thank you.”

The room lit up with Foggy’s grin. Claire declared she was almost finished and sent Karen and Foggy home to rest before they became her next patients. They reluctantly left, promising to return in the morning, and imploring him to rest.

“I’m kinda forgetting what your face looks like when it’s not half purple,” Foggy told him as he closed the door behind him.

Claire continued her mending after their departure.

“You don’t have to stay,” Matt croaked. He needed to avoid getting choked by his own billy clubs.

“Foggy was pretty impressed by your display up there,” Claire told him, rather than addressing his point. “Told me you’re going to teach him some self-defense.”

“Yeah, I offered.”

“You’re not thinking of having a sidekick.” It was a declaration.

Matt huffed a laugh, then groaned and slid a hand over his newly-wrapped ribs. “No. No sidekick.” Claire’s silence spoke volumes, so he continued. “Just want him to know a few things. Like…how to avoid getting stabbed when your only weapon is a baseball bat.”

“You plan on that happening often?”

Matt grew serious, reaching for her hand where it was checking the bandage at the side of his head. “I never plan on it.”

She sighed. “I know.”

“But…you guys know, now. You’re in it. And…,” he paused, carefully weighing his words. “I know I won’t hear you every time.”

He shivered involuntarily and burrowed deeper into the blankets. Claire curled her legs up on the couch, leaning gently against him.

“So you want us to know how to stay alive until you can reach us.”

“Something like that.”

“What about Karen?”

Matt frowned. “Karen, too. Though, something tells me she’s serious about knowing how to take care of herself.”

Claire moved some of his drying hair off his forehead. “What about me?”

Matt leaned his head over until it rested on top of hers. It felt good, just sitting here like this. Her scent, her warmth, the feel of her skin on his, the steady rhythm of her breathing, the comforting cadence of her heart.

He wanted to just stay like this.

“I want you safe,” Matt said quietly. “I want to hide you away.”

“Just bring me out when you’re bleeding?”

“Something like that,” he repeated, a soft smile in his tone.

“Get some sleep, Matt,” she ordered. “You can meditate, or whatever it is you do, tomorrow.”

Matt let her shift him slightly so that his head was supported on the arm of the couch and his legs stretched out across her lap.

“Claire?” He was suddenly anxious about being alone in his apartment, waking up to the silence of a single heartbeat.

“I’ll be here,” she said, resting a hand on his arm, just beneath the bandage. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Foggy had said he had a place to fall, a home. He’d been alone so long, he didn’t know how to wrap his mind around that concept, bring it into reality.

“Claire,” he started, feeling her hand flex on his bicep as her response. “I’ve been…broken, I think.” It was tough finding the right words to explain a feeling so wrapped in edges it cut him with its very existence. “For a long time.”

She rubbed his arm slightly.

“I didn’t…I didn’t know it. I just…it’s how I lived.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“What if…that’s gone?”

Claire swallowed, and he heard tears in her inhale. “You are what your past made you. What your city made you,” she told him. “Recognizing that you aren’t alone in this world doesn’t change what you are. It just changes how you react. Maybe the choices you make. But you’re still _you_.”

He was still Matt Murdock. Orphan, lawyer, blind, gifted. He was still Daredevil. Defender, vigilante, protector, warrior. Now, though, he had something of his _own_. A family to catch him when he fell. To help him find all the pieces and put them back together again.

“Thank you, Claire.”

“Go to sleep before I decide to drug you. Again.”

With her warmth against him, Matt allowed himself to sink, knowing that when the cries of the city greeted him the next day, there would be people who would be listening for _him_.


	10. Epilogue

**

**Epilogue**

_Karen pulled the bag of popcorn free from the microwave and bounced if from hand to hand until it was cool enough to grasp. Foggy had set up a Netflix queue and was cycling to the next movie on his list of Required Cinematic Education. It seemed strange that just two weeks ago, they were reading about Bobby Henley’s arrest and opening the investigation into the Messala family._

_“Is he here?” she called from the kitchen._

_“Not yet,” Foggy answered back. “Let’s start without him.”_

_“I thought this was a joint education venture,” Karen teased as she carried the popcorn into the living room._

_Foggy traded a pillow for the bowl. “You heard about the dock workers getting grabbed from the pier, yeah?”_

_Karen nodded, curling her legs beneath her and clutching the pillow before replying, “Yeah, I read about that yester—no. Is that where he is?”_

_“It’s my guess. He looked plenty pissed when he heard about it this morning.” Foggy tossed a clump of popcorn in his mouth and said around it, “Especially when they reported that one guy was found in the warehouse all cut up.”_

_“Okay, thanks for that,” Karen frowned at him. It was going to take her a while to get that image from her head. “Did he…I don’t know…say what he was going to do about it?”_

_Foggy raised an eyebrow at her. “He’s barely accepted that we know where he goes at night. I don’t quite think we’ve gotten to the gut-check crazy-assed Daredevil schemes part of our friendship yet.”_

_Karen sighed, nodding. “Well, let’s wait a bit. He might still show up. What’s on our list tonight anyway?”_

_“Godfather,” Foggy grinned._

_“How many titles until we get out of the ‘70’s?” Karen asked, turning on her television._

_“Forty-two,” Foggy grinned broader._

_The news caught their attention immediately, showing in split-screen a serious-faced anchor and what looked like security footage. Karen unmuted immediately, both listening as the anchor reported that the footage had been released to them just moments ago when police reported an anonymous call alerting them to the location of two dock workers who had apparently been captured the night before and where being held in the cargo hold of a barge along the Hudson._

_“Witnesses reported sightings of the Daredevil on the barge earlier tonight, followed by an explosion. We warn you, the footage you’re about to witness is unedited and may be considered graphic in nature.”_

_Karen was bent practically in half, leaning toward the screen as she and Foggy watched Matt—_ Daredevil _—battling three men, two of whom fired repeatedly at his ever-moving frame. It seemed impossible that he’d managed to avoid the bullets, but he continued forward, slamming one of his billy clubs at one man while drawing his elbow back and crashing it into the skull of another._

_They tuned out the report, focusing in on the screen. Karen gasped as one man tossed Matt back against a load of drums, a spark igniting something liquid on the deck of the barge. Matt launched up, dodging the flames, and managed to throw one man overboard before stopping in a motion his friends new as him listening. Without warning, he began to run toward the edge of the barge; when the barrels blew, shooting flames and debris ten feet in the air, Matt’s body was silhouetted against the fire, just before the footage fizzled out._

_“What…?” Foggy managed as the anchor reported no sign of the Daredevil among the wreckage of the barge, but that the dock workers had been found alive and were awaiting treatment at the local hospital._

_Karen muted the sound. “Foggy.”_

_“He’s fine. He made it out,” Foggy declared, forced certainty masking fear. “He had to make it out.”_

_Karen drew a shaky breath. “That explosion—“_

_“Was really loud,” Matt’s voice interrupted._

_Both jumped and Karen gasped at the flash of winter air that blew in from the opened window at the back of her apartment. Matt stood in the shadow of the window, his mask gripped in his hand, face dusted with soot and a few streaks of blood, catching his breath._

_“Are you…,” she chose her words carefully, “burned?”_

_“Turns out, the suit protects against burning,” Matt informed them._

_Foggy stood up, running his hands through his hair, struggling for what to say next. Karen knew he was concerned, but Matt was standing in front of them, solid and strong and not swaying or trembling. The blood on his face was minor in comparison to what they’d witness just two weeks ago. And most of all, he’d come to them rather than retreated to the solitude of his apartment or continued his patrol of Hell’s Kitchen._

_Neither of them wanted to dissuade him of this new habit._

_“Well, unless you’re purposefully heating the outside, close my window and grab a change of clothes,” Karen said casually. “Foggy brought you some. They’re in the bathroom, there. Behind you.”_

_Matt smiled and in seconds vanished into the bathroom where his clothes were waiting._

_“He seems okay,” Foggy said to her. “Right? He looked okay.”_

_“He_ is _okay,” Karen reassured him, a hand on his shoulder. “And he’s here. That’s the most important thing.”_

_When Matt emerged looking moderately normal, though he’d not managed to clean the blood from his face, they assumed positions on the couch, leaving him the armchair and his own bowl of popcorn. Karen watched as he sank into the chair and reached for the food, the tilt of his head exposing his habit of checking on their wellbeing before speaking up._

_“What’s on tonight’s list?”_

_“Godfather,” Karen told him._

_“So, should I be careful of horse heads in my bed tomorrow?” Matt teased._

_“You better watch it, Murdock,” Foggy fired back. “Or I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.”_

_Karen laughed as Matt toss popcorn at Foggy with surprising accuracy, then settled in as the movie started. Foggy began with his narration, pausing only when the characters spoke, translating the subtitles on the screen for Matt._

_“So, Marlon Brando is sitting there in his tux looking totally badass as Vito Corleone,” Foggy began. Karen glanced over at Matt, watching him listen to both Foggy and the movie, and exhaled a moment of thanks._

_He fought the bad guys, answered the cries for help, and chose to come back to them. They were his family. And he was theirs._

_For however long they kept the world from burning him up._

FIN

**Author's Note:**

>  **A/N:** Thank you for reading and for taking time to leave me comments, if you did. Your time is a gift and I sincerely appreciate it. I’ve enjoyed rolling around in the world of Matt Murdock for a bit longer; I hope you were entertained. 
> 
> Next up: _Acta Non Verba_ , a Musketeers fic. Depending on, well, everything, I should have it finished by the holidays. Hope to see you then!


End file.
